


What Happens When Two Substances Collide

by softlyforgotten



Series: Substances Colliding [1]
Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco, The Young Veins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-22
Updated: 2011-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-22 22:36:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyforgotten/pseuds/softlyforgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>park that car/drop that phone/sleep on the floor/dream about me. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Happens When Two Substances Collide

**Author's Note:**

> Written for tardis80's birthday! She once said that her ideal fic would have "ninjas, robots, astronauts, unicorns, pirates, pining, misunderstandings, butterfly kisses, pushing people into walls, and happy endings. A cat or two would nice". This is most probably not what she had in mind.

It rained on Ryan’s way home, and he’d forgotten his umbrella. The library was only three blocks away from his tiny little house, but that was far enough for him to get considerably soaked, and he hugged his messenger bag under his big coat, hoping it wouldn’t soak through.

It was still cold when he opened his door, and Beatrice only twined around his leg for a few seconds before backing away, hissing and obviously disgruntled by his damp pants. Ryan dropped his bag and crouched to pet her head for a moment, rubbing her ears gently when she butted her head into the middle of his palm.

“Sorry,” he said, and Beatrice purred up at him, easily appeased. She wasn’t very bitchy, for a cat – or if she was, not in a way that Ryan noticed. She suited him, after all, even though he’d never thought of himself as a cat person, wouldn’t have ever had one if Beatrice hadn’t followed him home a few months ago. He didn’t want another dog, anyway, not after Keltie and that particular mess.

His answering phone was blinking at him on the counter, so he dropped his coat over the back of the couch and pressed play while he went and got changed into dry clothes. It was Jon, asking if he wanted to go see a band on Friday night – Ryan was glad that Jon had gotten the machine, decided he could ignore the invitation unless Jon called again. He was fairly confident that Jon wouldn’t.

There wasn’t anything very appealing in the fridge, but Ryan wasn’t that hungry, anyway. He ate for the sake of eating, the last packet of instant noodles that tasted like cardboard, and thought that he’d have to try and go grocery shopping on the weekend; he was pretty sure he could live until then on toast, anyway. Then he curled up on the couch with the book Patrick had given him for Christmas, that had been lying discarded in his overflowing bookshelf ever since. After he put his empty bowl aside, Beatrice came and curled up on his stomach and he ran his fingers through her scruffy fur absently, still unable to make it lie flat.

When the rain stopped, he wandered outside to check the mail (he’d been making an effort, ever since Spencer got pissed about Ryan forgetting to pay his bills, _again_ ) and there was a small package from Pete. He opened it to find three burned CDs inside, with a note that said _i miss the summer league_. Ryan grinned despite himself, ducking his head; The Summer League was his and Spencer’s and Jon’s crappy college band that Pete had gotten all invested in. Ryan put them on his shelf, with his other CDs. He didn’t listen to them, didn’t need to, knew already the hit-and-miss lyrics and his own rough voice. Still. It was nice to have a little bit of history there. Ryan’s house always felt so empty, even after three years living there.

He checked his emails on his laptop, finding and deleting a link from Jon to the band-on-Friday’s MySpace. Beatrice waited on the sofa for him and Ryan drifted over to her easily, flicked through the channels on his crappy TV before turning the set off and reading his book, instead.

It was another normal evening and, left alone a little longer, Ryan was pretty sure that he’d be asleep before ten. At quarter past nine, though, the front door opened and Spencer came in, already calling out. Ryan put the book down but didn’t get up, stroking Beatrice’s back and smiling up at Spencer when he came in. Spencer didn’t visit as often as he once did these days, but they talked on the phone at least once every three days or so.

“Hey,” Ryan said. “How was your day?”

“Alright,” Spencer said, shrugging out of his jacket. “Kind of traumatic. That new kid, Frank? He set fire to two stoves, and the whole class had to evacuate. It was fucking freezing outside.”

“Frank’s the—”

“—tiny, hardcore looking one, yeah.” Spencer sighed and put the pile of papers and books currently occupying Ryan’s armchair on the (already full) coffee table before sinking into it. “Anyway. How was yours?”

“Fine,” Ryan answered. “You know. The usual.”

Spencer eyed him narrowly. “Yeah,” he said.

He sounded disappointed, and Ryan shifted, trying to gather Beatrice up closer to his chest instinctively. She hissed at him in an annoyed sort of way and Ryan smiled crookedly down at her; he forgot, now and then, how much she liked being left alone. He guessed that was why they got on so well most of the time.

“ _Ryan_ ,” Spencer said, and Ryan’s head jerked up guiltily.

“Sorry,” he said. “What’d you say?”

“Are you going to Jon’s thing on Friday?” Spencer repeated.

“Oh,” Ryan said, and waved a vague hand. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Apparently the band’s pretty good,” Spencer told him. He was looking at Ryan weirdly, creases around his eyes. Ryan looked at his hands in Beatrice’s fur. Somewhere along the line, he thought, he kind of forgot how to talk to Spencer without making Spencer mad at him. Somewhere along the line, he forgot how to talk to _anyone_.

“Um,” Ryan said. “Yeah, well. I’ll see.”

“Ryan!” Spencer exploded, and then he took a deep breath, sank back into his chair. “I just… would it really hurt to go?”

Spencer looked so unhappy, Ryan thought. He wasn’t sure how to make Spencer feel better, though – going to see a band couldn’t do that, not really, that was such a stupid _little_ thing. He said in a low voice, “No, but I… Friday’s my last day of work for the week, and I’d like to just. Hang out and relax, you know.”

“You mean, sit here,” Spencer said, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “You mean, read your book and feed your cat and maybe eat something yourself, if you remember. It might even have vegetables. Jesus, Ryan.”

“Why are you mad at me?” Ryan asked, folding his arms. “I just don’t want to see the—”

“I’m not,” Spencer said, even though his voice was a bit too loud for him to get away with saying that. “I’m not, sorry, it was just. You’re really fucking frustrating, sometimes.”

Ryan swallowed hard. He _knew_ he frustrated Spencer now, knew that Spencer didn’t get why Ryan preferred the company of his cat and the rain on his windows to being out with their friends, these days. It was different from college, but Ryan liked it that way, and he didn’t know what to do, how to reassure Spencer that this was what he _wanted_. How to explain that he had spent so long being so uselessly, fiercely unhappy or the opposite, filled with a strange kind of ethereal joy that was too quick to dissipate, and that this quiet, calmer state of being was sort of nice. That Ryan liked his cat but wouldn’t be torn up if she ran away, that he liked his job but didn’t get incredibly stressed out about it, that he could write without feeling huge pressure to be writing the world’s next masterpiece.

“I don’t mean to be,” he said quietly.

“I know,” Spencer told him, running his hands through his hair. “I didn’t mean to yell. It's your life, I know, I just… you look so lonely.”

“I’m not,” Ryan said, surprised. The idea hadn’t even really occurred to him.

“Alright, then,” Spencer said. “That’s good.” He hesitated and then said, “You should think about coming on Friday. You know Jon’s friend, Brendon? He was going to be there. I’ve met him a few times, he was really nice.”

“Now you’re trying to set me up,” Ryan said, dryly, and Spencer laughed, shook his head.

“Lost cause,” he said. “Anyway. I’ve got to go meet Haley for a movie. I’ll see you tomorrow or something, yeah?”

“Bye,” Ryan said. Spencer touched Ryan’s hair, just quickly, as he left, and Ryan smiled slightly at him. It must be weird, he thought, for Spencer to suddenly have Ryan not… _need_ him as much. Ryan thought it would be good though, once Spencer got used to it; it was unfair, how much Ryan had been hogging him. It had been selfish of him, but he was being good now, and he was doing surprisingly well on his own.

Once Spencer had left, Ryan stretched back out properly and finished his book. He considered moving to his bedroom to sleep, but couldn’t really work up the need to care. His couch wasn’t the most amazingly comfortable thing in the world, but neither was his bed, and no one would be there in the morning to laugh at him. Beatrice did not, after all, mind.

Ryan slept.

*

The next morning, Ryan returned the book he had borrowed last night before pinning on his badge and going over to start reshelving. William blinked at him. “Wow,” he said, “You finished it already?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “I liked it, thanks. Is her other book good, too?”

“ _The Mermaid’s Chair_ ,” William said, immediately. “Um, not really? I didn’t like it, anyway. But maybe, you know, because I like, I never finished it.” He picked up _The Secret Life Of Bees_ and held it absently for a moment, smiling a little stupidly. “God, you read fast.”

Ryan shrugged. “I didn’t have anything else to do.” William was wearing the customary bandana around his leg. It looked brighter than usual; vibrant red against the soft colours of the library. It was raining again outside, a steady patter. Ryan had remembered his umbrella this time, but the wind still swept the rain into his face, and weirdly, he’d thought he could taste salt.

“Ryan?” William said, and Ryan realised he must have been talking for a while now.

“Sorry,” he said. “Zoned out, you know,” and William laughed and patted his arm.

“Today’s Wednesday,” he said. “Hump day! Any big plans for the weekend?”

“Not really,” Ryan said, starting to drift away. William was nice and he had good taste in books, but he talked a lot about his friends and the crazy stuff they got up to on the weekended, and Ryan ended up feeling inadequate and colourless in comparison. There was always that expectant pause at the end of William’s stories, where Ryan _knew_ he should launch into a “this one time…” of his own, and it always fell flat.

The day went by nice and easy. Ryan spent most of it reading _Moby Dick_ with his feet propped up on the desk. When he walked home, he was sure he could smell salt again, and he rubbed his wrists absently. He looked down at them, and for a moment he thought he could see rope burns across his tattoos; then he blinked, and they were gone. _Long day_ , he thought.

*

He woke early the next morning to Beatrice yowling in the kitchen. For a moment, he was disorientated; it was still dark outside, and Beatrice sounded like she was trying to pass terror off as fury. He swung out of bed awkwardly, grabbed a worn hoodie from the floor and was glad he wore socks to sleep when he stepped onto the floorboards leading into his kitchen.

“Hey!” he shouted out to Beatrice. There was a great roaring noise; water slapping against wood. It sounded a little like the rain that he’d fallen asleep to hours ago, but different, too, and Ryan’s house wasn’t made of wood. “Hey, girl, what’s wrong—”

The room lurched and Ryan tumbled to the side, slamming his shoulder hard against the wall. He couldn’t get his balance back, and he slipped to the ground, landing painfully on his knees. He blinked, and then raised his head and watched as the roof of his house melts away.

Something frantic and confused seized at his heart, and it raced. Ryan thought, _this is a dream_ , as he stared up at a cloud dark sky, watching lightening flash across it, and he knew it wasn’t. There wasn’t anything remotely dreamlike about it, and people were shouting in front of him, and then William was kneeling in front of him, hands on Ryan’s elbows, helping him up.

“You okay?” William shouted over the roar of the sea, and the room lurched again. The walls were gone now, Ryan noticed; he could see across the wooden floor to the rails, and the waves beyond them. A ship, he thought. Everything was frightening and painfully real.

“I’ve lost my cat,” he told William, but William couldn’t hear him, and Ryan shook his head when William leaned in and asked Ryan to say it again. Instead, he shouted, “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know!” William said. “I was just about to go to bed!” He gestured at his head, where the bandana from yesterday was tied jauntily, red against the curls of William’s hair. Ryan thought he could see a glint of gold in William’s earlobe; his hair was windswept, and looked thick and tangled with saltwater. William looked like he belonged here, in knee-length boots and a shirt open at the chest. The wind was fierce and chilly enough that really, he should have been cold, but William wasn’t shivering. Ryan clutched at the soft, almost worn through elbows of his hoodie, and tried to be brave.

He turned around, and looked up at the mast of the ship, where the flag recognisable from a thousand movies and books snaps in the wind. Ryan stared at the skull and crossbones, and when he turned around, William was running after a guy with a shaved head and tattoos all up his back, towards a rope flapping across the deck.

A yell sounded familiar, and Ryan turned blindly towards the sound, struggling to stay upright against the buffeting wind. He searched through the dark mess of activity, and then heard it again; Spencer, unmistakeably, calling Ryan’s name, sounding more than a little frantic. Ryan took a breath and pushed forward, looking for him. He shouted out, “I’m coming, I’m – Spencer! Spence!”

He took stumbling steps forward, but didn’t get very far at all towards the staircase leading up higher (Ryan didn’t know the name for things. He wondered if maybe he was supposed to) before someone ran past him and knocked him off balance. He tripped forward, grazing his hands, and sat on the deck helplessly. It was wet and kind of slimy, but it was more stable than standing up, and Ryan was half-asleep, his legs shaking.

“Hey,” someone said, out of the dark. Ryan looked up and there was a guy watching him, dark eyes under a pool of lamplight. “You okay?”

“I lost my cat,” Ryan said again, plaintively.

“Oh, shit,” the guy said sympathetically. “Don’t worry, we’ll find it. You okay apart from that?”

“I’m,” Ryan said, stupidly, and then laughed mirthlessly. “I’m on a fucking _pirate_ ship.”

“Yeah,” the guy said. “I don’t know why. Here, lemme give you a—”

He reached out a hand and Ryan thought for a moment, then took it. The guy tugged him closer, and then up to his feet, hand still holding firmly onto Ryan’s. He turned around and Ryan followed him, his hand wet and slippery in the other guy’s, and then the guy fumbled for a doorhandle and tugged Ryan inside a warm, brightly lit room. The floor and walls still sway, but Ryan could _see_.

He turned to the guy, who had since dropped his hand. He had brown eyes and dark hair and he was grinning at Ryan like he was pleased to see Ryan, like he had been waiting.

“Thanks,” Ryan said.

“Any time,” the guy said smoothly. He tilted his head to the side, considering, and then his grin widened and he said, “I’m Brendon.”

“Jon’s friend?” Ryan asked automatically, and Brendon nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re Ryan, right?”

Ryan blinked at him. “How did you know?”

Brendon smiled again, flashing white teeth. “You’re the odd one out,” he said. Ryan looked down at his hoodie and sweatpants and flushed, but Brendon shook his head, and perched on a wooden table. “Not like that,” he clarified. He was wearing the same sort of clothes as William, and there was a sword strapped to his waist, and Ryan regarded him doubtfully, but Brendon just smiled crookedly at him.

“It's like,” he said, “these are the things everyone’s dreamed up, but you just got dragged into them.”

Ryan paused for a moment, to see if that made any more sense after thirty seconds. It didn’t. “What?”

Brendon laughed. “It’s okay. I don’t really get it, either.”

Ryan hesitated. “Alright,” he said, slowly. He was warm now, at least; he thought he could deal with this. For a little while, anyway, just until the storm was over. “So, just to like… clarify, you don’t normally live on a pirate ship?”

“Nah,” Brendon said. “I’m doing music at the University of Illinois. I was playing piano at home, and then suddenly it was a harpsichord, and I was in a cabin. Most of the people here I recognise? From like, around town or something. Except you, I’ve never seen you before.”

“You knew who I was,” Ryan pointed out. “You knew I was the odd one out.”

“You are,” Brendon said immediately. He sighed, shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know how to explain it. You look different. And I looked at you and knew who you were.”

Ryan slumped back against the wall. “Is any of this meant to make sense?” he wondered.

“I’m really hoping not,” Brendon said. If nothing else, Ryan thought, at least Brendon had a nice smile.

*

The rain died down after a while and the ship stopped rocking about so violently, and Brendon deemed it safe to venture outside. Ryan followed him a little warily; Brendon seemed all too cheerful, too confident of what he was doing. Outside, though, Spencer was waiting, and he grinned wide when he saw Ryan, beckoned him forward. Ryan stood next to him, smiling despite himself.

“So,” Ryan said.

“Listen,” Spencer told him, dryly, “When I said you should get out of the house more, I didn’t exactly mean…” He gestured around them, the dark sky above and the slap of waves against the wood, and Ryan laughed.

“It wasn’t like I planned this,” he said.

“I know,” Spencer said, mournfully. “Just. I was _sleeping_.”

“Attention, ye scurvy dogs!” someone called, hanging out from over the rail. “Avast and, uh, plunder or something, for I bring ye news of the dreaded—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Pete,” Patrick said, emerging from the cabin. “Shut _up_.”

Ryan blinked around him. “Is _everyone_ I know here?” he wondered aloud, and Spencer rolls his eyes.

“It is a little unimaginative,” he acknowledged.

“ _Pirates_ , Ryan,” Brendon said, hooking his chin over Ryan’s shoulder. Ryan started, and Brendon grinned at him. “Why are you complaining? This is kind of awesome.”

Ryan sidestepped so he could look at Brendon properly; Brendon’s good humour was contagious, and he had to bite back a smile. “I have a splinter,” he said slowly, holding up his hand so Brendon could see.

Brendon’s smile widened, and he reached for Ryan’s hand, but Ryan turned and walked away. He didn’t know why he was, just that he was walking, and it was frightening and too much like some awful nightmare, because he couldn’t make his legs _stop_ , they just kept moving, on and on. The ship was a lot steadier now, not moving at all, not even with the waves. He walked and the wood beneath his feet changed to pavement, and got narrower, and on one side of him was a road and on the other was the park he walked by every day. It was eight in the morning and he realised, gradually, that he was walking to work, that he was dressed in dark jeans and a sweater and a scarf, but that his hair felt stiff and tangled with salt. The day was cool and grey, the smog of the city giving a smoky air to the early morning light, and the road seemed strange to Ryan’s eyes, too flat, too long, dark and unchanging.

He looked down at his palm. There was a long, dark splinter embedded in the skin, and he stopped and tugged it out, mumbling curses in a low stream. He was bleeding, and he dropped the splinter on the ground.

It had been night time when he’d appeared suddenly on the ship, and now he looked around himself with wide eyes, hugging his arms around his stomach. “I’m not meant to be here,” he said, a little miserable. “I’ve skipped time.” He raised his hand to his mouth and licked the blood away. Then he was walking through his house, a glass of water in one hand and Beatrice twining around his legs. It was dark outside.

“What the fuck,” he said, tiredly. He was in his sweatpants and t-shirt again, except they were wet, and smelt a little like seaweed. He got out of them and crawled into bed in his boxers, Beatrice a reassuring weight on his legs.

*

When he woke up (and he was certain that he woke, knew that this was real with every fibre in him), his bed was in the middle of a green field and Beatrice was wandering away, towards the hills. Ryan stretched and sat up, staring around him. “No, seriously,” he said, “what the fuck,” and climbed out of bed. He wasn’t in his boxers, he was grateful to notice; he was wearing a grey vest layered over a ruffled shirt that he hadn’t worn since college, and pinstriped pants. There was a flower tucked behind his ear. He was also wearing a pair of Jon’s flip-flops, but he took them off and walked barefoot along the springy grass, holding the shoes in one hand.

Nearly ten meters away from him, the dark, lithe shadow of Beatrice was pacing easily across the grass, towards the hills that rose above it. Ryan tucked his free hand in his pocket and turned his face up to the sky, feeling the cool breeze. The world seemed a little like an illustration from a children’s book, all bright colours blending into a thin strip of darker horizon.

“Beatrice!” he called after a moment, because he didn’t want her to get lost here. Not when Ryan didn’t know how or when he was going to go back, or if he was even going to get back at all.

The grass was nice underfoot, soft on Ryan’s bare feet. He followed the winding shape of Beatrice as she made her way up the hills, and didn’t really notice that he was walking up them too until he was halfway to the top. It wasn’t a particularly large slope, more the kind that he and Spencer used to roll down as kids, and when he got to the top Beatrice was sprawled out on a large, flat rock, soaking up the sun.

“I’m kind of hungry,” he told her. Beatrice flicked her tail but didn’t otherwise seem particularly interested, and Ryan lies down on his back and folded his arms behind his head, gazing up at the blue sky. The clouds moved across slowly, and Ryan didn’t bother to make shapes out of them, just lay still and hummed a soft song to himself.

After a while, he realised he wasn’t the only source of faint music in the area; coming up the hill from the opposite side, someone was whistling cheerfully. Ryan blinked and wondered if he should be wary, but he didn’t think anyone was really going to hurt him, not in this place with bright, vivid colours and landscapes from storybook illustrations or indie movies. He stayed where he was, wondering vaguely what the whistler’s tune was.

A shadow fell across his face. “Hi,” Brendon said, cheerfully, and Ryan sat up.

“Um,” he said. “Hello. You’re here too?”

“I bet there are other people around somewhere,” Brendon said, taking off his backpack and dropping it to the ground before sitting down beside it. He was wearing soft linen pants and an untucked white shirt of the same material, loose around his throat. The backpack was made of plain, yellowish fibre, no logos to be seen. Ryan looked down at his own old clothes and wondered why, yet again, he was the one not dressed in a manner that suited the setting.

Ryan tilts his head to the side. “Like on the—”

“Pirate ship, yeah,” Brendon said, leaning back on his elbows. “Only, you know. This place is bigger. More room to get lost.”

“That makes sense,” Ryan allowed, after a pause. He offers, “I’ve got my cat, at least.”

“That him?” Brendon asked, nodding to where Beatrice was still napping on a rock.

“Her,” Ryan said. “Beatrice.”

“Like… Potter?” Brendon blinked, making a curious face. “And Peter Rabbit and all?”

“Oh,” Ryan said. “No, that’s Beatrix. But that’s a cool idea for a cat’s name, nice one.”

Brendon smiled at him and they fell silent, a little awkwardly. After a moment, Brendon said, “You want some food? There’s stuff in my bag.”

Ryan sat up. “Yeah, thanks,” he said, grinning. “I’m starving.”

Brendon’s bag contained a flask of coffee with carved wooden cups, and fruit, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Brendon shared them out equally, and they ate mostly in companionable silence, occasionally offering up a comment about how they got here. “Dunno,” Brendon said, grinning, “I was having a shower and when I opened my eyes after washing my hair I was here. I was just glad I wasn’t naked.” Ryan laughed and Brendon smiled, and then added thoughtfully, apropos of nothing, “It’s pretty here. I like it.” Beatrice dozed peacefully next to them.

When they finished, Brendon lay down on his back for a moment, then sat up; crossed his legs and uncrossed them; cracked his knuckles, his neck. Ryan blinked at him and Brendon looked uncomfortable for a moment and then jumped to his feet.

“Okay,” he said. “I think I need to keep walking.”

“Oh,” Ryan said. He looked at his hands. Beatrice stood up and deposited herself in his lap, and he stroked her head absently. It wasn’t like he knew Brendon very well at all, he thought. Still, it was nice to have someone to talk to.

Brendon shifted from foot to foot, almost bouncing a little bit, practically vibrating. He looked a little bit like a small child who really needed to go to the toilet, and Ryan bit back a smile at the thought. He didn’t understand this world; it seemed calmer than the pirate ship, but Brendon looked unsettled and like he needed to be moving, and maybe it was only Ryan who felt the same as always.

“Um,” Brendon said. “Do you want to come with me? I mean, I think. I’d like that. Please?”

Ryan glanced up, surprised. After a moment, he started to smile. “Sure,” he said, and Brendon looked relieved.

*

Ryan didn’t have any idea whether they should be going anywhere or where, in particular, that direction was, but Brendon set off east with a determined expression, and Ryan followed him, Beatrice purring in Ryan’s arms. He tried to walk smoothly and not bump Beatrice around, and it must have worked, because she fell asleep again pretty quickly. Ryan eventually stopped trying to keep his voice low, talked to Brendon normally.

Brendon was good company, too. He talked so easily and with no apparent need for Ryan to guide the conversation, but most of the time about stuff that Ryan knew, or was vaguely interested in. A lot of the time it was about people they both know – “It’s weird,” Ryan said, half-smiling, “You know everyone I do—”

“I sort of fell in with that group about three years ago,” Brendon explained, and then added, flashing his teeth in a grin, “’Round the same time they started complaining about you not showing up.”

Ryan shrugged uncomfortably, looked at the ground. “I’m not a big party person,” he said quietly, knowing that it wasn’t a proper excuse, not really, and that Brendon knew his (their) friends and would see it as the cop-out it is.

All he did, though, was nod. “Fair enough,” he said, and then laughed. “It is kind of hard to go out with Pete and Travis and _not_ wake up somewhere dark and smelly the next morning.” Ryan smiled at the ground, and Brendon changed the subject to one of the kids he gave piano lessons to on the weekended, and how the other day he tried to convince Brendon to put paint on their hands before they played in order to leave “patterns of music”.

“There’s a pretentious art major in the making,” Ryan commented, feeling a little hypocritical, but Brendon just laughed again and agreed.

Around late afternoon, they both started complaining about how hungry they were, only to find that Brendon’s backpack was full again. Brendon grinned, and Ryan crossed his arms and said, “It’s kinda annoying how everyone is cool in these places except me,” and they sat down and ate again. Unfortunately it was exactly the same food, and Ryan wasn’t _that_ crazy about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but it was filling, at least, and the coffee was good.

When they finished eating the sun was going down. It was a warm, balmy kind of evening, the type you’d expect after a really hot summer day, even though the day had been nice and cool, good for walking. Brendon said, almost cautiously, “We may as well just stay here, huh?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, stretching out on the grass. It wasn’t comfortable like a bed, but it wasn’t too hard under his back. He petted Beatrice’s head absently, stroking her ears while she purred and butted her whole head up into the palm of his hand. “This thing’s lasting longer. Longer than the ship, anyway.”

“I don’t mind so much,” Brendon confided, smiling at the last rays of the sun going down behind the hills they came from. “I only had a lecture and stuff today, nothing I’m really gonna miss. It’s weird here, but like… not bad. I could stay awhile.”

“I’m tired,” Ryan said, rather than agreeing. When the sky fell dark, he was asleep almost immediately, and he woke at dawn.

*

The second day was much like the first, except for Ryan being with Brendon from the very beginning. Around midday, they stopped for yet more sandwiches, but Brendon looked at the same old PB&J and made a face, annoyed and resigned. “Maybe I’ll just stick to fruit today,” he said. They also spent an hour coaxing Beatrice down from a tree.

They had been walking for another few hours when Brendon stopped short in the middle of the path. Ryan turned and blinked at him, but Brendon just looked really uncomfortable, hugging his arms to his chest, holding onto his elbows.

“I think,” he said, and fell silent.

“What?” Ryan asked after a minute, but Brendon just made another face, mouth twisting. He looked caught between confusion and slight pain, holding himself awkwardly, and Ryan reached out and grabs his arm, shook it a little. “Brendon, _what_?”

“We need to,” Brendon said, and then he smiled and turned, holding himself naturally again, and they looked up at the hill in front of them, another green grassy slope. Ryan tilted his head, and heard the sound of hooves slipping across rocks coming from behind it, in this place where there were no rocks.

“What,” Ryan began again, barely breathing out the words, and Brendon shook his head.

“Wait,” he said.

The unicorn, when it appeared at the top of the hill, was like every picture Ryan had ever seen, every light-hearted drawing of girls with golden hair frolicking in fields, every story where they rushed in and save the poor heroine, and Ryan was terrified of it. The unicorn was tall and perfectly white and strong, and it tossed its mane and its horn looked very, very sharp. _It is too magical_ , Ryan thought a little incoherently, _we are not meant to be seeing this_ , and he reached out and Brendon took his hand, squeezed it. When Ryan looked at him Brendon was white-faced and staring, too, and Ryan thought _you were not expecting this either_ , and wondered what ‘this’ even was.

Ryan said, in a small voice, “Do we—”

“Stay very, very still,” Brendon whispered back, and then the unicorn trotted down the hill, not amazingly graceful in its movement; but grace was really the last thing on Ryan’s mind.

When it was about two metres away, the unicorn said, HELLO. There was no sound in the surrounding landscape, Ryan was sure, but it wasn’t exactly a voice in his head, either, and when he looked at Brendon he knew that Brendon had heard it, too. Brendon dug his nails into Ryan’s hand and Ryan swallowed hard.

“Hi?” he offered, and felt like an idiot.

WE HAVE BEEN WAITING, the unicorn said. YOU TWO WALK VERY SLOW.

Brendon huffed a tiny, stupid laugh, turning his face away from the unicorn. Ryan really, really hoped it didn’t take offence.

“I’m sorry?” Ryan said tentatively, and wished everything didn’t come out as a question.

IT IS FORGIVEN, the unicorn told them. YOU MUST COME WITH ME NOW. YOUR TASK IS AT HAND.

“We have a.” Brendon stopped, laughed again, weak and a little bit louder. The unicorn tilts its head to the side and regarded Brendon in a puzzled kind of way, and Brendon rests his forehead against Ryan’s shoulder and said, “Ryan, the unicorn has given us a task.”

“Brendon,” Ryan said, warily, “Do you think that, possibly, not laughing at the mythical beast with the huge sparkly horn might be a good idea—”

“Compensating for something, maybe,” Brendon suggested, and then broke down into slightly hysterical, breathy giggles. Brendon had been so _normal_ , Ryan thought miserably. It seemed a little unfair that he was picking this particular moment to go crazy.

HE IS IN SHOCK, the unicorn observed. IT MUST NOT BE HELD AGAINST HIM. COME.

“That’s what she said,” Brendon told them.

Ryan clapped a hand over Brendon’s mouth, horrified. “Sorry,” he said, quickly, “Sorry, sorry, he was just—”

YOU ARE BOTH VERY YOUNG, the unicorn said. DO NOT BE ALARMED. WE MEAN NO HARM. WE ONLY DESIRE YOUR HELP.

“Um, sure,” Ryan said. “Only. I mean. Sure, like… what can we do for you?” Brendon giggled against Ryan’s palm. Ryan glared at him.

THERE IS SORROW IN OUR HOME, the unicorn told them. IT HAS LONG BEEN PROPHESISED THAT SUCH A DAY WOULD COME, AND THAT TWO YOUNG MEN WOULD DELIVER US FROM IT. IN RETURN, WE WILL HELP YOU – and it turned its steely gaze on Ryan – FIND YOUR PLACE IN TIME AGAIN.

“Do you know what’s going on, then?” Ryan asked, tentatively, and the unicorn considered and then inclined its head just once.

IT IS THE STARS, it said. THEY ARE MEDDLING AGAIN.

It refused to clarify.

*

“But, I mean,” Ryan hissed, as they followed warily behind the unicorn (Beatrice had retreated to Ryan’s arms again, most displeased by the sudden addition to their company), “You knew when it was coming, and you knew the direction we had to go in—”

“Yeah, Ryan,” Brendon whispered back, “Because that’s _exactly_ what I think when there’s a weird fucking… pull to go in a certain direction, I think, oh, it’s those goddamn _unicorns_ again.”

“Seriously, though,” Ryan said. “This is insane.”

“I liked the pirates better,” Brendon said, mournfully. “I had a sword.”

“The ship was all wet, though,” Ryan reminds him. “I was soaked through. And it was all shaky, I couldn’t stand up for longer than two minutes.”

“I had a _sword_ ,” Brendon said.

*

The unicorn had a name, but when Brendon asked what it was, the unicorn let loose a scary, barking stream of syllables that made no sense, and sort of set Ryan’s teeth on edge. Brendon blinked and said, “So, hey, Unicorn Thing—”, and the unicorn made a soft snorting noise that could have been displeasure, or maybe just a laugh.

MY HOME IS A FORTNIGHT’S WALK AWAY, the unicorn said. IT WOULD BE FASTER, ONLY NEITHER OF YOU CAN TOUCH ME IN ORDER TO TRAVEL ON MY BACK, AS YOU ARE NOT PURE.

“Pure in the sense of… maidenly?” Brendon asked. “Because uh, I have something to tell you guys,” and then Ryan gave him an incredulous look and he cracks up laughing.

Most of the time the unicorn just ignored them, though, a few paces ahead and never needing to look back and make sure they were following. At night it stood a little way away from them, grazing on the soft green grass, and when they woke up in the morning it was always waiting impatiently, gazing further east. It left Brendon and Ryan alone, really, made itself into a presence that they followed instinctively, the same as a flickering light, or a road. Still, Ryan never quite lost the sense of prickling unease, the undefinable feeling of wrongness, as if he wasn’t meant to be seeing such things.

“I wonder what it meant,” Brendon said one day. “About the stars. This whole thing is really weird.”

“Yeah,” Ryan agreed. “This place feels so empty. Apart from us and like, the goddamn _unicorn_ —” Brendon laughed, and Ryan grinned at him.

“I like the unicorn,” Brendon told him, in a low voice. “It’s impossible, but. I get the feeling that in these places, uh, you can have or, or _do_ things that you can’t, or just wouldn’t, back, back home, you know?”

Ryan shrugged his shoulders, unaccountably subdued by that. He was quiet for a while, and then he asked, “Does it ever strike you as pretty strange that we recognise how weird this whole thing is but don’t really do or… _feel_ anything about it?”

“I don’t know, man,” Brendon told him, grinning. “I was on the pirate ship all day, before you showed up? I was pretty terrified at first, freaked out until Pete came and sat with me awhile. I think he’d been there, like, a week or something. And when I appeared here, I like.” He looked down sheepishly. “Uh, I threw up a lot. You know. I guess I just got used to it by the time I found you?”

“Oh,” Ryan said. “That’s kind of. I thought maybe it was part of the thing, like, just not _caring_ when it happens, where you end up.”

Brendon looked at him, something soft in his eyes. “Maybe that’s just you,” he said, and Ryan fell silent. He petted Beatrice until she got annoyed at him and jumped out of his arms to wind a crooked path behind them, and Brendon laughed a little uneasily, looking down at the ground.

“So, anyway,” he said, “Tell me about life at the library. How many crazy people do you get?” Ryan hesitated for a moment longer but Brendon looked so hopeful and his smile was so careful that Ryan couldn’t help it, launched into a story about the regular they got, with greasy black hair and a shy smile who borrowed books on art and zombies and vampires, paint stains on the backs of his hands, and the time he came in early in the morning and was all sad and twitchy until finally William took him into the staffroom and fixed him some instant coffee.

Brendon laughed in all the right places and it was good, Ryan enjoyed it, Ryan was fine.

Mostly, though, if he was being truthful, he just really enjoyed Brendon. He was even a little annoyed at himself for not having gone out and met him sooner, because Brendon was funny and clever and talked about music in a way that made Ryan want to hear him play, or at least spend a day at one of their places swapping records and songs and this cover, that rarity. Brendon told him about putting off his music degree to go roadtripping around the States with his best friend, how he was in his last year now while most of his friends had graduated or were doing post-grad stuff, but Brendon didn’t mind, he wasn’t in a rush.

“I mean, it’s music,” Brendon said, grinning. “It’s not like I’m ever gonna get sick of it, you know?”

They only stopped walking at night when it was so dark that Ryan started tripping over Beatrice, and then the unicorn stood a little way away from them. It shone a bit in the darkness, and Ryan wondered sleepily if the unicorn was a star, or part-star, or something.

Beatrice came and stretched out beside him, even tolerated it when Ryan put his hand on her, winding his fingers through the warm fur of her back as he closed his eyes. Time moved fluidly here, almost slipping through Ryan’s fingers, and it had already been ten days of walking since they met the unicorn. Ryan was tired, but he couldn’t quite make himself fall asleep. He was overly conscious of Brendon, sitting with his back propped against a tree and humming softly to himself as he crunched on an apple.

THE OTHER BOY, the unicorn said, suddenly. IS HE YOUNGER THAN YOU?

“No,” Brendon said. If he was surprised at the unicorn speaking to him (and Ryan was willing to bet that he was), he didn’t show it. “No, he’s a year older.”

HE LOOKS YOUNGER, the unicorn told him.

Brendon shuffled across the ground, not quite standing up, not just sliding either. Ryan felt his knee press into Ryan’s back. “I guess,” he said, a little doubtfully. He added, quieter, “Mostly I think he just looks sad.”

HE IS A QUIET COMPANION, the unicorn said, in an agreeable manner.

Brendon reached out gently and smoothed Ryan’s hair away from his forehead, hand lingering on Ryan’s face. “I like him,” he said. Ryan forced himself to breathe evenly and held very, very still.

*

Ryan felt weirdly shy the next day. Brendon was just the same as normal but Ryan found himself smiling a little stupidly at the ground which was – beyond idiotic, because Brendon was an affectionate kind of guy, as Ryan had worked out very quickly, and this didn’t mean anything. Still, though, he felt quietly, cheerfully _new_ , as if something was growing up out of him, making his fingers twitch, wanting a pen and a notebook to write in. He settled for just thinking, quieter than usual, in a way that made Brendon glance at him with a curious, almost-worried gaze.

WE HAVE BEEN MAKING GOOD TIME, the unicorn announced. ARRIVING TONIGHT IS A POSSIBILITY. LET US GO FASTER.

Brendon turned and grinned at Ryan. “Well,” he said. “Let’s go save some unicorns.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, and then Brendon held out his hand and Ryan hesitated for a moment before reaching out and taking it. Brendon smiled at him and Ryan thought, _yes_ , and then a car honked loudly behind him, and Ryan was suddenly getting wet, rain falling on him. It never rained in this place. “Oh,” he said, face falling, and then he thought, _no, no, I want to – just let me, with the unicorns_ , and he tightened his grip on Brendon’s hand even as the grass beneath him turned to concrete.

“Ryan?” Brendon asked, face going slightly blurry.

“No,” Ryan said, “No, please, Brendon, hang on, wait—”

“Is it,” Brendon began, and then his voice started shuffling around, rough and undefinable, and the unicorn was gone, and Ryan was standing in the rain on his way to work.

He hugged his arms around his stomach a little miserably. “Oh,” he said.

*

He went to work and sat in a dark corner of the library with a pile of books to sort, doing his best to hide himself away. The library was a refuge most of the time, but today it felt full of shadowy corners and dark reds, weighing heavily on him after the cool, green world of the unicorns. He kept his fingers still on the books, didn’t let them shake, didn’t wonder where Brendon was, if he was still wandering around that world, if maybe he managed to save the unicorns after all, if it was another two boys altogether in that prophecy ( _prophecies_ , really, Ryan didn’t even _believe_ in that shit). After half an hour, though, William came and found him, beaming all over his face.

“Hey!” he said, exuberant and delighted. Ryan ducked his head.

“Hi,” he said quietly. William looked unsure for a moment, but then shook his head and beamed even more. His bandana was tied just below his knee.

“Were you there somewhere?” William asked. “At, like, the green place? I figured you were with the pirates, you must have been—”

“You were there too?” Ryan blinked at him.

“Yeah!” William said, cheerful and too loud. “With a whole bunch of people. There was this huge lake, it was awesome, we just like… slept out under the stars for almost a week, and went swimming, and ate fruit, and stuff. It was great.”

“A whole bunch of people?” Ryan repeated. William nodded.

“Your friends Spencer and Jon,” William told him. “And then, like, a lot of their friends. I think it was pretty much everyone I knew and everyone they knew, like, just hanging out. Oh, except for Brendon.”

Ryan twisted his hands in the hem of his shirt. “You know Brendon?”

William rolled his eyes. “ _Everyone_ knows Brendon,” he said. “Even you, clearly, and you’re a fuckin’ _recluse_.” His smile sharpened, became darker. “And you know Gabe, too, huh? Why were you holding that out on me?”

“Gabe?” Ryan shrugged helplessly. “He’s pretty cool. We don’t hang out so much anymore.”

“Psh,” William said, with a dismissive gesture. “Like you hang out with _anyone_. I am still furious at you for it, Ryan Rossy. You have been hiding the love of my life away from me for all these years.”

Ryan tilted his head back, looked at William properly for the first time. It was hard to tell when William was being serious, sometimes; right now, his grin was threatening to take over his face, but he was bouncing back on his heels with his hands in his pockets in the stupid way he did when he was ridiculously pleased with himself.

“The love of your life?” Ryan echoed. “Does Gabe know this?”

William’s grin, impossibly, widened. “He will,” he said.

*

The library felt dustier than normal, making Ryan claustrophobic where he never had been before. He kept looking up and expecting to see long, grassy stretches of land and blue skies, but it was never there. He asked William if William wasn’t freaked out, incredulous at how cheerfully William was taking the whole crazy situation, but William just shrugged. “Sure,” he said, “but also, it’s kind of amazing. I figure you may as well just enjoy that shit, huh? Even if it turns out we’re just getting drugged through the air-con or something.”

Ryan liked William a lot, but the guy was kind of confusing sometimes, so during his lunch break Ryan called Spencer. Spencer picked up almost immediately. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

“I was,” Ryan said, honestly. “Now I’m sort of… why is everyone taking it so… easily?”

“They’re not,” Spencer told him, quiet and warm. “Patrick’s been freaking all day. He’s come round to my place and refuses to walk anywhere without gripping onto surfaces, like that’ll help if it happens again. No one’s taking this _easily_ , whatever the fuck this even is—”

“Someone told me, in the last one,” Ryan said, “that it was like. Something to do with the stars.”

“Astronomy?” Spencer sounded doubtful. “I don’t know, isn’t that a little too much of a mystery book for you? Everyone finds out that just because Jupiter is directly aligned with its fifth moon and the power of Venus is in the western corner of the sky or something—”

“I don’t think they meant it like that,” Ryan said. He swallowed hard and said, voice coming a little faster, a little rougher than usually, “Spence, I think this is… I think it’s got something to do with me, I don’t know why, but I’m the only one who ends up there not changing, not with clothes or weird senses or knowing how to get places, I can’t _think_ and it’s not a sudden change and I’m always leaving first, I—”

“It’s been twice, Ryan,” Spencer said, firmly. “Don’t freak out just yet. Were you okay, this last time? I tried to find you, but it was, the world was so _big_.”

“I was good,” Ryan told him. “I was. It was nice. I wasn’t worried there, just when – just now. I don’t know how it can be this normal, and this accepted, and it makes me think that, like. Maybe I’m going crazy.”

“Ryan,” Spencer said, and nothing else. Ryan turned his face towards the phone and breathed, tried to imagine Spencer here, close to him, the way he used to be in college, when Ryan was trying to deal with all his shit and Spencer was right there, warm against his side; and then that last, fleeting year, when Ryan was happy, when things were sort of okay.

“I thought I was doing good,” Ryan said in a small voice.

“Ryan,” Spencer said again. Ryan laughed a little shakily and Spencer said, “You are. You _are_ , Ryan.”

“You’re angry at me,” Ryan said. “You always. I can’t.”

“I’m not angry,” Spencer said. “You’re my best friend. I’m not angry.”

“I’m not much of a friend,” Ryan told him quietly, smiling crookedly even though Spencer couldn’t see it.

“Yes, you are,” Spencer said.

“Okay,” Ryan answered. He took a breath and said, “Anyway, I have to get back to work, so.”

Spencer sounded a little desperate. “Ryan, please—”

“Thanks, for like. Talking and shit. I’ll see you later, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Spencer said. He sounded tired, dispirited. “Yeah. Stay safe, okay?”

“Bye,” Ryan replied, and hung up.

*

It wasn’t really his job to polish windows, but he was avoiding getting stuck behind the Information Desk again, which would be worse today, and it was kind of peaceful. He held the Windex loosely in one hand and moved the rag in slow circles that got gradually larger, not really thinking about anything. He wondered if he had to be unfocused for it to happen, but certainly when the street outside started getting dark he blinked, instantly alert. He looked over his shoulder but the inside of the library was still the same; outside, though, the sun was sinking, night coming out, and as he watched, the street faded away too, and Ryan was just looking into night. The lights of the library behind him were suddenly brighter, and then duller, but Ryan wasn’t looking at them; he was looking at the endless mass of stars.

It wasn’t entirely surprising when he turned around to see that the library gone. Instead, he was standing in a smaller room, with a circular shape, and big windows that looked out into night. There was a huge desk full of panels and switches that took up half the room, and yes, Ryan knew where he was, knew there was no question about it this time.

“Huh,” he said, and went to explore the rest of the spaceship. There was a kitchen, the cupboards of which, Ryan noticed with bemusement, were stocked full of the instant noodles he ate at home; a small room with a bunk in it and some clothes in drawers that slid out of the walls, and a large space down a flight of iron stairs that was filled with large, nailed-shut wooden boxes.

Eventually, he went back upstairs to the original room, the bridge, he guessed. He wasn’t tired, but he sat down with his back against the wall and wrapped his arms around his knees, watched the ship drift through space. It was very large. The stars kept coming, countless thousands of them, and moons and planets appeared occasionally just out of view, but Ryan thought he was very alone.

It was cold, on the floor, and after a while he got up again. He found another room and when he walked past a silver nozzle, it burst into life, spraying hot water down on top of him. He cursed, but ended up pulling off his clothes and standing under the hot water for a long time. There were clothes in his drawers, anyway. Maybe he could just close his eyes and wait until he got back home, but eventually the water started to turn cold and Ryan was still there.

He went and got dressed in his room, and then walked into the kitchen, where a bowl of noodles was sitting steaming on the table. He called out to see if anyone was there, but there wasn’t any response, and Ryan wondered exactly how far in the future he had landed himself.

It took him a long time to get to sleep. It was night time, but it was always night time, Ryan guessed. He wasn’t very tired, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do, and when he finally did sleep, he dreamed about floating out through open doorways, lost and unable to breathe.

*

He woke up and it was still dark, it was still night. Ryan had no idea how long he had slept, whether it had been hours or days, but he was awake anyway, so he got up and wandered back up to the bridge. The ship seemed fine to steer itself and Ryan didn’t want to even try. He wanted to go home. This one, this world was too much; the empty ship, the silent rooms. He missed Beatrice.

The stars drew his eyes back to them again and again, inevitably. Ryan thought about the things he had read in science, back at his desk in high school, thought about the speed of light and supernovas and balls of gas. He looked at the stars and wondered how far away they were; they seemed so close, letting of a faint silvery shine, but probably, he thought, they were years away still, cold and unblinking in their steely gaze, fixed on Ryan.

He sat down in the chair in front of all the settings. There were red lights blinking but nothing urgent, all of the screens blank. Tentatively, he reached out and touched the largest one, directly in front of him, and then jolted backward when it came to life.

It looked like a really high quality shot from a webcam, but the room it was looking into was sort of dingy, a couch in the background and a coffee table with piles of papers and magazines. It looked empty, from Ryan’s viewpoint; he leaned forward hopefully anyway and called, “Hello?”

There was a banging sound from off-screen, and then a scuffling noise, and a moment later, Brendon’s head popped up, just in front of the camera, taking up most of the screen. He stared, for a moment, and then he beamed.

“ _Ryan_ ,” he said. “Hi!”

Ryan raised his hand to his throat, held it there. He could feel his smile; slow and a little sheepish, and just a bit too big. “Hi,” he said. “I’m so. Where are you?”

“In like, these fuckin’ headquarter things,” Brendon told him, grinning. “It’s like NASA or something, only so much cooler, _man_. Everyone’s just hanging out, it’s pretty awesome.”

Ryan shifted awkwardly on his chair. “Everyone?”

“Yeah, you know.” Brendon shrugged. “Everyone, and then this guy called Bill who says he works with you, and a bunch of _his_ friends, and some of them know Jon’s Tom and – yeah, it’s pretty awesome. We’re all in the other room, I just came back for my jacket, the fucking heater’s broken.” He tilted his head to the side. “Hey, where are you, Ryan? You should come hang out, we’re having fun. Jon somehow still has his stash.” He waggled his eyebrows invitingly.

“I think,” Ryan said, and stopped, swallowed hard. “I think maybe if. If you guys are at NASA, I’m, I’m the astronaut.”

Brendon stilled, sitting down properly for the first time, smile fading. “I. You’re in space?”

“Yeah,” Ryan whispered, even though he didn’t know why. There was no one he could disturb by talking loudly. “I don’t even know where. Just that I’m. Here.”

“Oh, fuck,” Brendon said, and dropped his head into his hands, rubbed wearily at his eyes with the heels of his hand. “So are we meant to be… making sure you’re safe or something? Or are the other people up there doing that for you?”

“Um, well, the ship’s driving itself pretty well,” Ryan hazarded, and Brendon looked up, gaze sharpening.

“You’re all by yourself up there?” Brendon asked, voice hard.

Ryan fidgeted uncomfortably, tucking his hair behind his ear. “Yeah.”

“Jesus, Ryan,” Brendon said. “We’ve. We’ve been here for three days. How long have you been up there?”

“Uh,” Ryan answered uneasily. “About that, I guess. I slept for a while.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Brendon repeated. “Are you okay? Is there food and stuff? Can you, can you _breathe_?”

“There’s food and oxygen and water,” Ryan told him. “And a bed, and a shower. It’s all pretty comfortable, really.”

Brendon bit his lip, tilting his head to the side. “Ryan?” he ventured, and Ryan breathed in sharply.

“I’m maybe a little lonely,” he said awkwardly, and gave Brendon a crooked smile.

Brendon blinked at him. Ryan would be pissed off if he looked sympathetic, or understanding, but he didn’t; he just looked worried, and upset. He pulled his knees up to his chest in the chair onscreen and said, “Yeah, I, I bet. Okay, then. I’ll just stay here.”

Ryan blinked at him. “You’ll – what?”

“To keep you company,” Brendon said, almost sweetly, and twisted his hand in his hair absently, smiling.

*

Brendon was true to his word, and for the next day they only really left their respective screens to go get food. It wasn’t like they talked all the time – Ryan wasn’t sure he’d even know _how_ to talk that long – but Brendon sat in sight no matter what he was doing, whether it was plucking absently at a guitar he produced from off-screen (“Yeah, William’s friend, the Butcher, he just turned up with one,” Brendon explained, grinning, “It’s pretty cool, I need to work out how to do that.”) or talking Ryan through fiddling with some of the other controls around the place, just to see what they do. “Not like I know, either,” Brendon said, “but at least this way if something goes wrong you can blame me.”

“What’s it like?” Brendon asked at one point. “Outside your window, I mean.”

Ryan tilted his head to the side, considered. “It’s really big,” he said eventually. “It’s really… it’s full of light and planets and things but mostly it just feels so empty. And it’s quiet. The ship makes this… a humming noise, sort of, but there’s nothing else, and I keep forgetting even the humming’s there.”

Brendon said, smiling wryly, “It doesn’t sound as cool as it does in novels.”

“I used to read about it,” Ryan agreed, speaking slowly. “When I was like, twelve, I went through a big stage. I thought it would be awesome to be on your own, you know. Not have to worry about other people or, or talking to them, and just be with stars. It seemed pretty romantic, you know.”

“Yeah,” Brendon said. He regarded Ryan a little curiously. “You know, when I was twelve all I _wanted_ was to talk to people.”

Ryan shrugged. “I’m not very good at that,” he admitted. “But I think I would have wanted Spence up here with me.”

“Oh, yeah,” Brendon said. “I forgot, you two have like, known each other for years or something, right?”

“Since I was six,” Ryan answered. “Yeah, I think he’s pretty used to putting up with me.”

Brendon laughed, but added at the end, “I don’t think that’s the way he sees it, you know,” before he brightened and asked, “Hey, are you maybe… remember what the unicorn said?”

“About the stars being the reason for all of this?” Brendon nodded, and Ryan sighed, stretching back on his chair. “Yeah, I thought about it for a little while. They just look like stars to me, though. They’re bigger and brighter up here but they don’t… talk or anything.” He smiled a little sheepishly and confessed, “I tried banging on the window, when I first got here, but nothing happened and then I freaked that maybe the window would break and I’d fall out or something.”

“That would suck,” Brendon said, grinning.

They talked about Brendon’s classes some more, about that one crazy teacher who hates Brendon with a passion for no particular reason (“Well, okay,” Brendon said, “One time I accidentally spilled coffee over all her marking. But apart from that I have done _nothing_!”) and Brendon and Gabe’s experimental one man band (experimental because there’s two of them). Ryan talked a bit about college, too, about his and Spencer’s and Jon’s band, and the all-nighter he pulled at a playground one time because he needed the right atmosphere to finish a story, and the time he went to class in his pyjamas and didn’t notice until Spencer picked him up, and he was quietly grateful that Brendon didn’t call him on the fact that all of his stories had happened at least three years ago.

Ryan still had no idea what the time was, but eventually Brendon told him that it was six AM, and that he had first appeared in the screen yesterday at midday. “Oh, fuck, sorry,” Ryan said, and wondered if that was why his brain felt so fuzzy, moving slow and sluggish, but Brendon waved it away.

“Ryan, it’s – I like talking to you,” Brendon said, soft and sleepy, and he gave Ryan that smile, the one that made Ryan’s stomach roll over, every time.

“I like _you_ ,” Ryan said, because he was exhausted and all alone in space and because he was missing the easy way Brendon touched him. It came out tired and too honest, and Brendon stared at him. Ryan ducked his head, flushing, but swallowed hard and forced himself to continue. “I mean. I do. A lot.”

“Oh,” Brendon said. He was smiling again, small and hopeful and weirdly grateful. “I. Really? Like, uh, not just…”

Brendon hadn’t said anything to return it, but Ryan was so tired of always being safe, always being on his own. His heart hammered stupidly in his chest and he took a breath, staring at his knees, and said, “Yeah, I. I mean, I want to kiss you like, um. All the time.”

There was a long silence, and eventually he dared to look up through his eyelashes. Brendon was staring at him, touching his mouth almost unconsciously, and Ryan felt his cheeks go even redder.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, and on the screen, Brendon shook his head rapidly.

“No,” he said. “No, I mean. Ryan _Ross_. I really like you, too.” He bit his lip, looked at Ryan with this stupid, soft gaze, mouth twisting up involuntarily into an almost awed smile. He laughed a little shakily, said, “I, I really wish I was there. With you.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, quietly, smiling at his knees. “Me, too.”

*

He drifted off to sleep for a little while, but not very long; when he woke up, the inside of the spaceship was bright, too bright, and he couldn’t quite contain the choked sound of fear. Onscreen, Brendon jolted awake in his chair, blinked at the screen. “Ryan?” he said. “You okay? What’s going on?”

“There’s fucking – the _sun_ ,” Ryan said, shielding his eyes against the glare of fire that the ship was speeding steadily closer to. “Fuck, fuck, I – how do I get this thing to stop—”

“Ryan!” Brendon called, sounding a little desperate, but his voice was already fading, and all Ryan can see was the light, the light. He closed his eyes for a second, the backs of his eyelids glowing red, and then when he opened them he was still standing in the oppressive heat, but he was on the ground, on _Earth_ , and Brendon was pressed up warm against his side. He had just enough time to process that he was holding a guitar and that Brendon was singing about reinventing love up against his face, sharing a microphone, before he blinked again and he was standing in the cold rain outside his door.

“Fuck,” he said, and stumbled inside, falling to his knees and scooping Beatrice up, pressing his face into her warm fur. “Oh, fuck.”

Beatrice purred and Ryan shivered, wet and shaking, and thought, you’re not alone, you’re okay, you’re right here.

*

Once Ryan had showered and dressed in comfortable clothes and reassured himself about a million times that the only thing his windows looked out onto were the other houses on his street, he called Spencer.

“Oh, thank God,” Spencer picked up with. “Brendon came back in and told us – but then everything was melting away again and – you were alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” Ryan said. He paused and added, smiling, “Thanks for coming in and saying hi, by the way. Asshole.”

“I didn’t even know,” Spencer protested, laughing. “Brendon just didn’t come back, we figured he’d disappeared back home or something. What _were_ you two doing?”

“We just. We just hung out,” Ryan said. He sort of wanted to ask Spencer for Brendon’s number, wanted to ring Brendon and say, _hey, now that we’re back, do you maybe want to go out with me sometime, or you could just come here, and watch movies, and make out with me on my couch_ , and that was a weird feeling to have. Ryan wasn’t even sure that he knew how to do stuff like that anymore, and besides, Brendon had said that in those places, you could do things you wouldn’t in this one. Ryan had a sinking feeling that kissing weird, awkward librarians might be one of those things.

“Ryan,” Spencer said, sounding cautiously amused, and Ryan swallowed, looked down at the floor. Nothing that big even happened, he thought, and if he was absently hoping that maybe he’d end up in another place soon, with Brendon real and next to him this time, well, then, whatever. It wasn’t like Ryan’s real life was that exciting.

“It was,” Ryan said, and stopped. “Nothing. Don’t worry.”

“Okay,” Spencer said, and Ryan could tell he was smiling. “Okay, Ryan. I’m glad you’re not hurt.”

Ryan made a humming, affirmative noise, and slumped down on his couch, staring up at the ceiling. “Jon’s thing tomorrow,” he said, as casually as he could. “Brendon’s going to be there?”

Spencer laughed, short and warm. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think he knows one of the guys in the band. Sean is in his music theory class or something.”

“Okay,” Ryan said, and fell quiet.

“You think you’ll be able to make it after all?” Spencer asked, and he was teasing, Ryan knew he was, probably even had Ryan on loudspeaker with Haley or Jon to giggle over it with, but Ryan couldn’t quite bring himself to care. Brendon probably wouldn’t – but just in case, just in _case_.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll do my best.”

*

He went out to the grocery store half an hour before it closed and raced around the aisles as quickly as he could, picking up fresh vegetables and a loaf of bread fresh from the morning and dusted in white flour. He felt like something fresh and crisp to eat all of a sudden, better than the soggy noodles he had been living on. The rain on his skin outside felt good, rather than just damp. He was maybe, maybe – although he would not admit it – looking forward to the next world, and Brendon’s smile like a promise.

At home, he sliced up tomatoes and washed the lettuce under the tap until it dripped and tasted cold and crunchy, and then he peeled a cucumber and sliced that up as well, and added the fancy mustard that Spencer bought him ages ago and some parsley. It was pretty much the best sandwich ever, and it looked especially good on the fresh bread. He contemplated taking a photo, decided it was maybe a _little_ too dorky, and then ended up doing it anyway, snapping a picture with his phone and sending it to Spencer.

He was about to take a bite when Spencer called. “I can’t believe you did that,” Spencer said, as greeting. “Seriously. How old are you?”

“It’s an amazing sandwich,” Ryan said, grumpily. “You’re always telling me to eat proper food. I’m _proud_ of that sandwich.”

“You’re a freak,” Spencer said, and Ryan could hear the way he wasn’t quite laughing, just grinning stupidly at thin air or possibly Haley. Ryan ducked his head and smiled as well. He was much sneakier at smiling on the phone than Spencer was; Spencer would never know. “You are such a huge freak,” Spencer continued, with incredulous delight. “Oh my god, stop smirking at me.”

“I’m hanging up on you now,” Ryan said haughtily, “to enjoy my amazing sandwich. If you were nice, I would offer to make you one too, one day, but as it is, I will keep my amazing sandwich making skills all to myself.”

“You do that,” Spencer said, and Ryan hung up grinning.

He was almost disappointed when he went to take a bite of the sandwich only to find his kitchen melting away, but not really. Mostly his heart just started beating stupidly fast and he kept his eyes on the ground, closed them after a second. He didn’t want to be dizzy when he arrived, and when a flair of light in front of his eyelids heralded that he opened them carefully, half expecting Brendon to be right in front of him, waiting.

He wasn’t. Ryan found himself in a stone hall, flickering torches like in movies on the walls, and the sound of laughter and talk coming from down the end of it. Ryan blinked and looked down at himself; still in the jeans and hoodie he wore to the grocery. He stood uncertainly and swayed from side to side, unsure where to go or what to do.

“Highness!” a voice said behind him, sounding shocked, and Ryan swung around to see a girl he vaguely recognised hurrying towards him. He tilted his head to the side, looked at her short blonde hair, and then realised with a slight grin that she bore a startling resemblance to the checkout girl at the grocery today. She wasn’t looking at him like he was an idiot customer, though, and she was wearing clothes that looked like they were from some period movie; she looked like she belonged here.

“Er,” Ryan said. “Hello?”

“Your highness,” she said again, and this time Ryan actually thought about it, and then blinked, because, wait, seriously? But she was already bumping up against his side, steering him firmly away from the sound of noise down one end of the corridor and saying, “You’re dreadfully late, you know, and _what_ are you wearing? Come on, quickly!”

She led him down what felt like a million passages very quickly, their feet ringing out on the cold stone. Eventually, he was shoved into a well lit, huge room, a four-poster bed in the centre of it. By the fireplace, Spencer turned around and looked amused.

“Hello, Princess,” he said.

*

Spencer was a jerk who amused himself too much for his own good, so Ryan sat down on his massive bed and patted Beatrice (who he found curled up in the middle) until Spencer had finished cackling gleefully. It took a while, especially because Ryan apparently _was_ the princess here, or at least that was how all the servants (who seemed to think this was the real world) referred to him. Every now and then Spencer would wind down, and then he’d look at Ryan and Ryan would raise an eyebrow or smile hopefully or just glare, and then Spencer would start laughing again.

Eventually, he stopped just because the girl knocked on the door and said, with an edge of annoyance, “Highness? They’re expecting you!”

“So, okay,” Spencer said, taking a deep breath. “So, you’re the Princess – I’m not done laughing, by the way, I’m gonna return to that amazing thought as soon as possible—”

“You do that,” Ryan said, coolly. “From what I can tell, you’re my valet.”

Spencer blinked at him. Then he glared.

*

After some time, they managed to get Ryan in some of the clothes they found in his wardrobe; expensive, soft trousers, and a linen shirt that had silvery laces to tie up at the chest. Spencer insisted on the knee-high boots and red cloak, too, arguing that they couldn’t be sure exactly how formal this feast-thing was, and that Ryan could always take the cloak off, if he needed.

Spencer, Ryan was disgruntled to notice, was already dressed in a formal, vaguely medieval looking outfit. Ryan had only done history for a semester at college, but he was pretty sure that they haven’t ended up in a time period that made any sense or contained any accuracy whatsoever – it felt more like a castle out of storybooks than anything else. Still, it was annoying that he was still the only one who turned up in every new world in the same old boring clothes.

When they were done, they found the maid waiting at the door, and she gave Ryan an appreciative (albeit strangely professional) look-over before nodding decisively and leading the way down through the endless stone corridors. Ryan could feel a crawling anticipation under his skin as they headed towards the sound of voices, a little nervous but mostly excited. He spotted Spencer smirking out of the corner of his eye when Ryan dropped his head and smiled at the floor, but couldn’t even bring himself to care.

They rounded one last corner and then someone at the door looked at them and shouted, “His Royal Highness, Ryan Ross!” and the great doors swung open to a room full of people standing hastily to their feet, most of them looking like they were trying to hold in laughter.

It was pretty much everyone Ryan knew, again; Jon and Tom and Cassie sitting close together down one end of the table; William and a rowdy bunch of guys around him, along with Gabe by his side looking lazy and contented, and Vicky-T smiling next to him; Pete and Ashlee playing footsie unobtrusively under the table while talking animatedly to Greta. The table was crowded with what looked like hundreds of dishes of foods, some that Ryan didn’t even recognise, and servants that looked slightly familiar, like the guy who was at the bus stop every morning when Ryan passed, standing by with wine that they filled empty goblets with. Even upon Ryan’s entrance, the night was rowdy and cheerful and full, and Brendon was nowhere to be seen.

Ryan tried not to notice his heart falling somewhere in the vicinity of his boots and said instead, smiling crookedly, “Well, this is weird,” before walking to the spare seat at the head of the table, Spencer pushing his way onto Ryan’s right-hand side. Everyone sat down and the conversation started up again, people shouting greetings to him, and the servants exchanging shocked glanced that people dared to be so familiar with their monarch.

Pete shifted slightly, excusing himself from his current conversation, and leaned closer to Ryan. “Hey, Rossy. Long time no see.”

“Hey,” Ryan said, and grinned. He had missed Pete, this past year or so, although it was a bit of a shock to realise it. They were once really close in college, Pete turning from the older student Ryan had thought pretty much hung the moon into one of his best friends, with sleepovers and late nights at hipster coffee shops and even the occasional jam session. It was kind of sad, Ryan thought, how they’d drifted apart, but Pete had met Ashlee and – no, that wasn’t really fair. Ryan liked Ashlee a lot. He didn’t think it was _Pete’s_ fault. A little ashamed, he looked down and pushed some roasted chicken around on his plate.

“So,” Pete said, and he had that dark, intent look in his eyes, at odds with the slightly manic grin. Ryan still knew him well enough to know that that meant Pete had some serious stuff to talk about. “This world seems a lot bigger than the last few.”

Ryan swallowed, looked at him. “You’ve been thinking about it?” On his other side, Spencer was watching and listening, eyes sharp.

“’Course,” Pete said, comfortably. “Kind of the thing you have to think about, if you keep getting dragged into stories, like this.”

“You think that’s what it is?” Ryan asked. “Stories?”

“Maybe,” Pete said. “Most of it feels pretty magical to me. But I don’t know, Ryan. What have _you_ been reading lately?”

His eyes were sharp and discerning. Ryan swallowed hard. “Why ask me?” he inquired carefully.

“Because I’ve been talking to Spencer,” Pete said, and Ryan darted a glance over at Spencer’s expressionless face automatically before turning back to Pete. “And because there’s weird things like – before you turned up on the pirate ship, everyone felt like they were waiting for something. And William said that the storm only really showed up in full force after you appeared on the deck. And then in the kind of green, hilly world – well, you weren’t there, we didn’t see you, but Spencer said you _were_ the astronaut while we were at the weird science headquarters, huh? And look at you now. You’re royalty, and we’re your faithful subjects.”

Ryan said, shakily, “If you think this is my fault—” and Pete barked a laugh.

“No,” he said. “Of course not, I’m not blaming you for anything. I’m just saying, it feels like you’re at the _centre_ of all this. Knowing that kind of stuff is how we’re going to work out what’s going on.”

“Well.” Ryan rubbed his chin, still feeling knocked off-balance. He sighed and said, “Well, yeah.” After a moment, he offered, “In the green world? Me and Brendon were on our own. And we met – we met this fucking _unicorn_ , who told us that we had a quest, that we were important. In that world, I mean.”

“I’m not,” Pete told him, “really that surprised.”

“Yeah,” Ryan agreed quietly. “Yeah, I think maybe you’re – yeah.” He pushed his hand through his hair and said, “You said this world felt bigger?”

“Yup.” Pete bit into a potato, chewing hastily and swallowing. “Yes, because – it isn’t just you and friends, you know, there’s these servant people. Some of them I’ve seen around in the city? So I figure they’re something familiar, faces you know, but they don’t have the same personality, or maybe they do, but they _belong_ here. They think this is the real world, have you noticed? This is _their_ world, as far as they know. Which makes me think that maybe we could head out of here and keep talking to people until maybe, there’s a possibility that we could find someone who _wasn’t_ just a face you vaguely knew, or whatever. And that maybe they might know what’s going on.”

“Oh,” Ryan said. “Oh, wow, yeah, I never even thought of that. You think it’s possible?”

“I’m pretty sure,” Pete said. “It makes sense. It’s building up. The worlds are getting bigger, sort of – the pirate ship was just that, but then the other world, the one with – unicorns, you said? That was like, it had enough room for us to be in two places and never run across each other. And then the last one, that was a whole huge campus for us, and then outer space for _you_ , and it was connected. I think it’s possible that we’d be able to keep going, exploring, further in this world. The problem is whether we can stay here long enough to do that before we get pulled back into our world.”

Ryan stared, and then laughed a little incredulously. “Wow,” he repeated. “You’ve got it all sorted out.”

Pete grinned at him, wide and madly cheerful as ever. “Oh, you know me,” he said. “I have to get shit arranged nicely in my head or I’d just go crazy. Could be that I’m completely wrong.”

“Could be right, too,” Spencer said, and Ryan looked at him and nodded. “We’ll have to pay more attention. We need to know what’s going on, I think.”

“Yeah,” Pete said. “I mean, this is all pretty impossible and cool right now, but it can’t go on forever. It would get shitty.”

Ryan looked at his plate. He thought about Brendon finding him, in all the worlds, thought about Brendon saying _in these places you can have or do things that you can’t, or just wouldn’t, back home_ , thought about Brendon’s eyes clear and truthful on the screen, Brendon’s fingers resting on his own mouth, red and slightly open. “Yeah,” he agreed, stomach twisting.

*

He didn’t go back to his own quarters until late that night. It was ridiculously fun, really, to sit around with all these people who he knew and liked and who knew and like him, and to listen if he wanted to or to talk, with good food and nice wine (although he didn’t drink very much; after so many years of not drinking, it still took a ridiculously small amount to get him drunk, and he didn’t want that to happen in a strange world). It had been a long time since he’d done anything like it.

Finally, though, he was yawning and sagging forward in his seat, and that same girl came and took his elbow gently and said, “Would you like me to walk you back to your rooms, Highness?”

“Um, yeah,” he said. “Thanks.” He stood up and waved goodnight to everyone, and the room erupted into even louder noise again for a moment, people shouting goodbye (lots of his friends, he noticed with a grin, didn’t seem to have a problem with getting slightly drunk; he spotted William, bright-eyed, leaning on Gabe, who had his arm crooked around William’s neck, and wondered if William had told Gabe about their destiny yet).

His own room was warm, the bed covers folded back invitingly and Beatrice dozing in front of the fire in a small wicker basket of her own, filled with a soft cushion. There was a candle burning on a small stand next to his bed, and it all looked so cosy and welcoming that Ryan felt even more tired almost immediately.

The maid wished him goodnight and shut the door, and Ryan struggled to get the laces of his shirt undone sufficiently that he could pull it off over his head. There was another shirt, softer and less complex looking, waiting on the bed, and he pulled that on, too; it was a little too long for him, coming down to mid-thigh, but his ordinary clothes had vanished and it was comfortable enough to sleep in. Despite the fire, Ryan thought it would still be a bit cold to sleep naked, especially when he didn’t know where he was going to wake up.

He crawled into bed and blew out the candle. “Night, Bea,” he said sleepily, and imagined a slight purr in response, even though Beatrice was a poor conversationalist. The bed was softer than anything he has ever felt before, but not overly so, and the room, unfamiliar as it is, felt safe and welcoming. Ryan had barely closed his eyes before he was asleep.

*

It was still dark when he woke up, not even the faint glow of blue before morning; dark and foreboding, with the only light provided by the glowing embers in the fireplace. The room felt colder than before, and suddenly frightening; Ryan lay very, very still on his side, terrified, wishing he knew where Spencer was. There was the slightest rustle beside him, and Ryan drew in a sharp breath, and then turned his head as minutely as he could.

There was someone standing by the side of the bed, holding a knife that glinted silver in the faint light.

Ryan shrieked and sat upright, scrambling away as fast as he could, but the person beside the bed was faster, moving across the bed in a rush and pinning Ryan up against the headboard, arm hard against Ryan’s neck. Ryan struggled and gasped, but he couldn’t get enough breath to shout loudly now, and all he succeeded in doing was getting his hair all over his face so that he could barely see his attacker.

“Stay still,” the person said, “stay still and this’ll be easier.”

Ryan froze. He tilted his head up as best he could, shaking his hair away from his face, and breathed, “ _Brendon_?”

“Holy shit,” the guy said, and scrambled away, falling to his feet beside the bed. “Wait, _Ryan_?”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Ryan asked, eyes wide, sitting up properly. Brendon was dressed all in black, down to a mask across his face, showing only his eyes. The whole outfit looked vaguely familiar, especially with the weird little black scarf tied around his head. “Jesus, are you trying to _kill_ me?”

“No!” Brendon said. “I was sent to kidnap – wait, _you’re_ the princess?”

For a moment they stared at each other, and then Brendon folded down onto the floor with surprising grace and burst out laughing. He sat with his back propped up against the bed post and cackled. He repeated, “ _Princess_ ,” while unwinding the scarf from around his hair and taking his mask off, and the room suddenly felt a lot warmer. Ryan wished a little huffily that people would stop having this reaction. He wasn’t even a girl, for fuck’s sake.

“What are you, then?” Ryan asked, a little huffily. “Some sort of – fucking night time stalking ninja?”

Brendon stopped laughing. “Well,” he said. “Well, yeah.”

Ryan blinked at him. “Wait,” he said, “for serious?”

Brendon shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “I – I got here this time and I was in this, this weird sort of cave thing, and there were all these guys in black sitting around plotting how to kidnap the Princess and stuff, and also I could do this.” He rose to his feet and jumped in the air, spinning three somersaults upward. When he landed, his knife was at Ryan’s throat. Ryan blinked. Brendon smiled. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Uh, that’s one word for it,” Ryan said, and Brendon grinned, stepping back a bit. He was still really close. Ryan bit his lip and smiled, added, “I’m glad you’re here. Even if you did try to kill me.”

“Hey, Ryan Ross,” Brendon said, voice low and warm, “I’d never try and kill _you_. I just wanted to take you away for a while.”

Brendon was too cheesy, Ryan thought, he was too cheesy, and Ryan should absolutely not be blushing. He told Brendon, quietly, “Now you just sound like Gabe.”

“Gabe wishes he could be as smooth as me,” Brendon said. His eyes flickered down, taking Ryan in, and then he asked, grinning, “Are you wearing a nightgown?”

Ryan shook his head but couldn’t come up with something clever and rude to say, not when Brendon was drawing closer and closer, his eyes dark and fixed on Ryan. Ryan’s gaze dropped to his mouth almost involuntarily.

When he looked up again, Brendon was watching him, looking startled and something else, too, something young and curious and weirdly vulnerable. “Hey,” he said quietly, “Hey, so, what you said,” and Ryan swallowed the last vestiges of his pride and nodded.

Brendon touched Ryan’s hair clumsily, hand knocking against the side of his face, and then Brendon leaned down and Ryan reached up and the kiss was surprisingly forceful, mouths knocking hard each other, almost off balance, almost painful, and Brendon said, “Mmmf,” against Ryan’s mouth. Then he pulled away and moved forward, hopping a little awkwardly onto the bed beside Ryan. Ryan put his knees down, staring wide-eyed at Brendon, and Brendon shifted carefully, crawling until his knees were on either side of Ryan’s legs, leaning over him and kissing him again, softer.

They were being careful with each other, Ryan thought a little dizzily, not even kissing very deeply, touching hair and skin and smiling occasionally against each other’s mouths, Brendon laughing softly. It all felt very quiet and very safe, and Ryan thought maybe this was the last room in the world and they were the last people, and he didn’t mind.

They broke away and Brendon stared at him, his mouth red and open, breathing a little raggedly. Ryan swallowed hard and said, “I guess I have like, horrible… not-quite-morning breath.”

Brendon shook his head, looked bewildered. “No,” he said, and then paused, added, “Was that a way to stop me kissing you again?”

“No.” Ryan laughed quietly and shook his head, feeling small and confused but stupidly, intensely happy. “No, please,” and Brendon did kiss him again, and Ryan bit at his bottom lip, greedy, until Brendon folded in close to him, groaned slightly and Ryan swallowed the sound and everything was suddenly wet and hot and surprisingly desperate. Brendon pulled back and tugged at Ryan’s shirt impatiently until Ryan lifted his arms and helped Brendon take it off, and then Brendon was wriggling out of his ridiculous one piece ninja costume and pushing back the covers and it was just them, still just them, and Ryan thought he could stay here forever, letting the crackle of the fire cover their soft, swallowed gasps.

*

“Myrgh,” Brendon said, muzzily. “Time s’it?”

“Dunno,” Ryan mumbles into Brendon’s shoulder. His nose itched; he rubbed it against Brendon’s skin, smiling when Brendon batted aimlessly at his head. “I went to bed around, uh, I don’t know. Midnight, I think? When’d you come?”

“I was in the tree,” Brendon told him, and yawned. “And I waited like… three hours after your candle went out? So that the rest of the castle would be asleep.”

“Stalker,” Ryan sighed, burrowing closer. He was tired again, and comfortable, and he wished Brendon would shut up and go to sleep.

“Whatever,” Brendon said, and yawned again hugely, jaw cracking. “So it’s like. Four-thirty, five?”

“One must wonder,” Ryan observed, a little grumpily, “Why one is still up.”

Brendon smoothed Ryan’s hair back behind his ear, an aimless kind of gesture, over and over again, and then he said, quietly, “Listen, don’t think this is… whatever of me, but. I have to go.”

Ryan froze. “What?”

“It’s just,” Brendon said, and he sounded really, genuinely unhappy, but Ryan kind of wanted to be sick. “I’m meant to have kidnapped you, and, like, _obviously_ I’m not going to do that, but I need to get back or they’ll send other people and kidnap us _both_. And then this way maybe you can be safe, and I’ll just tell them that – that you slept in a different room or something, and I’ll come back again tomorrow night.”

“You can’t just,” Ryan began, and then breathed out, jaw tight. “Fine.”

“Ryan,” Brendon said, almost pleadingly. “Ryan, I’m not running out on you, I swear—”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Sure. Whatever.”

“ _Ryan_ ,” Brendon said, hopelessly, and he squirmed around and pulled Ryan upright, kissed him warm and dirty, almost biting at his mouth; and then soothing, sucking little kisses that left Ryan breathless and tilting towards Brendon instinctively, reaching for him.

“Listen to me,” Brendon said finally, breaking away, breathing hard. “I’m going to come back, I promise, as soon as I can, and just – seriously, you just gotta trust me. Okay?”

“Brendon—”

“You gotta _trust_ me,” Brendon repeated, and Ryan took a breath and nodded. Brendon kissed him again and then stood up. He got dressed quickly, leaving the mask off until the very last, and kissed Ryan one last time, clumsy and quick, fingers pressing hard against Ryan’s face. Then he disappeared out the window, into the approaching blue light of dawn.

Ryan was tired not so long ago, but he knew already that he wouldn’t sleep again today.

*

When Spencer came in, yawning and knuckling sleep out of his eyes, the sun was already fairly high in the sky and Ryan was dressed and half-dozing by the fire, running his fingers through Beatrice’s fur.

“Hey,” Spencer said. “Sleep well?”

Ryan looked up and grinned. It had been five hours since Brendon left, and Ryan felt stupid and enough like a thirteen year old girl to bask in the feeling that that meant it wouldn’t be long before he came back. Or, not very long, anyway.

“For a while,” he told him. “You?”

“Fine,” Spencer said, and eyed Ryan a little suspiciously. “What are you all happy about?”

“Nothing!” Ryan protested, and stretched slightly.

Spencer’s eyes narrowed and then widened, mouth falling open. He raised a vindictive finger and pointed. “You totally had sex last night!”

Ryan, to his misfortune, started laughing, and as a result any denials come out between giggled, and Spencer glared, folding down cross-legged on the floor and propping his chin in his hands. “That is _so unfair_ ,” he said. “Can’t you transport Haley here with your freaky mind powers?”

Ryan looked up, interested despite himself. “Haley didn’t come into the worlds?”

“Thanks for noticing,” Spencer said dryly. “But, no. Cassie comes along sometimes, Ashlee’s almost always here, but Haley was only on the pirate ship.”

“Oh,” Ryan said, and scratched his chin. “Sorry, man.”

“It’s alright,” Spencer told him, looking amused. “I know it isn’t your fault. Anyway, it’s not like you can distract me that easily. Who’d you sneak in here last night?”

“I didn’t sneak anyone in,” Ryan said, wide-eyed and truthful.

Spencer was quiet for a moment, regarding him suspiciously, and then he said, “Oh my God.” Ryan blinked politely. “Oh my God, Brendon totally turned up, didn’t he?”

Ryan tried to control the twitching smile in the corner of his mouth but Spencer took it as the confirmation it was and laughed in a short, warm burst. “Well. Finally, huh?”

“I’ve only known him since Monday,” Ryan said, affronted. “Really this is kind of slutty of me.”

“Yeah, and you were in the unicorn world pining over him for what, a fortnight?” Spencer rolled his eyes. “This is—” he stopped, laughed again. Ryan smiled, a bit embarrassed, rubbing his palm against his cheeks.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, like an admission.

“Ryan fucking Ross,” Spencer said, regarding him with some fondness. “Where is he now, then?”

“I don’t know,” Ryan said. He stretched out on his stomach, kicking his legs lazily in the air. “But he’ll be back.”

*

The day passed slowly. Ryan and Spencer found Jon, William, Gabe and Tom and set out on an exploration of the castle. It was easier to find your way around in the day, less complex, and there were patterns to follow and landmarks to recognise along all of the twisting corridors. Outside, they found a large, cool lake, and the water and day were both warm enough that they stripped down to their underwear and dived in, splashed and laughed and floated staring up at the blue, blue sky.

Ryan got tired early, too few hours sleep the night before. He headed up to his room and a maid brought in dinner and wine. He was a little embarrassed to admit that he fell asleep a bit before it got dark, watching the evening star out his window.

He was woken by Brendon shaking his shoulder, bending over him. He sat up blearily, shaking his head. “I didn’t even hear you come in,” he said, voice thick.

“Ninja,” Brendon told him, and shrugged. He was watching Ryan with a warm, intent look in his eyes. “Are you tired? I shouldn’t have woken you—”

“S’fine,” Ryan said, yawning. He sat up, bedclothes falling away. “D’you know what time it is?”

“Midnight,” Brendon said. “I think.”

“Everything go okay with your freaky ninja friends?”

“Yeah.” Brendon sat on the bed next to Ryan’s knees, kicking his feet idly against the side. “It’s weird. I don’t think they’re quite – fully formed? They’re not anyone I’ve seen before, anyway, and they never take off the robes and mask and shit, and they accept excuses too easily.”

“Hmmn,” Ryan said, thinking about Pete’s theory. “Maybe you should ask them about all of this. See if they know what’s going on.”

“Yeah,” Brendon agreed. “Yeah, I think I will. Although if they’re just… stock people filling up the world, then – anyway.” He moved closer, and said quietly, breath warm against Ryan’s face, “I think – you remember the unicorn? I thought, climbing up the tree… this sounds really dumb.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ryan told him, smiling crookedly. “I’m only waking up, I won’t judge.”

“It was like the stars were. Humming, or something,” Brendon said. He looked down, face twisting. “I don’t like this world, Ryan. I – it’s bigger, and more frightening. There was never any harm before—”

“There were the unicorns,” Ryan pointed out, “and their weird sorrow or whatever—”

“But that was far away,” Brendon countered. “That was – we couldn’t see it. Here, I’m _part_ of it.”

Ryan shook his head. “They can’t control you or anything. Just. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” Brendon said. “Okay.” He sat quiet for a moment and then looked at Ryan, said a little slyly, “Just waking up, huh?”

“You did wake me,” Ryan said evenly.

“Sorry.” Brendon was grinning, dark and wicked. “Should I go and let you sleep?”

Ryan reached up and dragged him back down, and then they didn’t talk for a while.

*

Time passed lazily, slow and warm in this world held cupped in some sort of eternal springtime, with frequent feasts and festivals, and horses that they could ride. Ryan and Spencer went out and wandered through the forest, scrambling up a tree at one point when a (luckily, placid enough) wild boar burst into the clearing. Later Jon tracked them down and they lounged about and make daisy chains. The world felt clean and green and very, very beautiful.

He spent some time wandering through the grounds of the castle on his own, stopping to talk to the gardner. Judging by his flattered but not altogether surprised reaction, Ryan guessed that his subjects were used to a friendly sort of monarch, and that was a surprisingly comforting thought. Ryan tried questioning him a little, leading him towards theories of different worlds and aligned universes, but the man was politely bewildered and Ryan was forced to conclude that for the people here, this world was the only one they’d ever known.

He turned to research, instead. The library was full of strange texts in formal language that Ryan read with his feet propped up on a chair, but none of them seemed to shed any insight on the last week’s events. He ended up reading for the sake of it, swapping huge, heavy manuscripts with William and trading recommendations. He spent long afternoons with Victoria and Greta in the orchard, climbing up trees and dropping fruit into the waiting baskets below, and he napped a lot, lethargic and happy enough about it, on green hills or soft beds, beside streams and his friends.

And at night, Brendon came through his window and they bit and licked and touched. Brendon pressed him down into the soft mattress and fucked him slowly, smiling crookedly until Ryan twisted and arched and begged; or sucked him off, Brendon’s own hips rutting shallowly against Ryan’s sheets. Every morning Ryan stripped the bed and left it in a wrinkled, somewhat guilty pile by the door, and it seemed a natural and normal part of this strange, charmed world that he didn’t even have to wash his own dirty laundry.

Brendon and Ryan stayed up late and talked, heads bent together, limbs sprawled and sweaty, on the bed or the floor (Brendon holding him firm against the wall, head bent to murmur in Ryan’s ear, low and dirty, until they both crumpled), and then kissed, and fucked, and talked again. They traded stories and tiptoed down to the kitchens for midnight feasts, and when it was warm enough, they slung blankets over their shoulders and walked through the grounds and out into the fields beyond, until their pauses to kiss grow longer and more frequent and they ended up spreading the blanket out and spending the rest of the night right there, Ryan tiptoeing back into the castle with the dawn, a grin, and grass in his hair.

Brendon talked about the things his – mostly silent – companions back at “Ninja Lodge” (he said, grinning) related to him, now and again. They were strange, indecipherable riddles about fate being crossed and miswritten, the world falling out of balance, disorder and disharmony. They were ominous words, but Brendon told Ryan almost lazily, their bodies curved around each other, and it all seemed very far away.

It took Ryan a while to recognise the deep, giddy happiness welling up inside him for what it was, but once he did, he clutched it to him and kept it tight.

*

“Why doesn’t he stay the night?” Spencer asked again, frowning.

Ryan shrugged. “I told you. He can’t. He keeps pretending he needs to kidnap me again. He said it’s like they get… reprogrammed every night, like they’re not _real_ enough to notice flaws and stuff. As long as it makes a vague kind of sense, they believe it.”

“He couldn’t come back late one afternoon and say he got waylaid or something?”

Ryan swallowed down the uneasy feeling that threatened to loom up inside him now and again and said, “That’s not the way it works.”

*

“—mysterious visitor!” an excited girl’s voice finished, and Ryan stopped in his path, curious, to listen to the conversation being conducted around the corner.

“Don’t gossip,” another woman responded, voice tight, stern. Ryan wondered if, despite that, she was smiling. “Where are you even getting this from? Rumours in the kitchen? You should know better than to trust anything you hear _there_.”

“Ben told me,” the first responded, with a hint of smugness in her voice. “He could see from the stable loft. He said the shadow climbed out of the tree and into the Princess’s bedroom.”

Ryan blinked. It still caught him off-guard sometimes, the way that people _lived_ so fully in this world, believed in it, didn’t even begin to think that it wasn’t real. Rya wondered whether somehow it had existed forever, some version of himself whom he had temporarily replaced ruling here, or whether they had been dreamed into existence just when Ryan and his friends had arrived, ready with a complete set of memories.

“Ben is a meddlesome, nosy _child_ of a young man, then,” the woman hissed. “I’m sure His Highness is behaving with complete decorum—”

“Oh, no, of course!” the first girl said quickly. “I wasn’t suggesting – I just, I think it’s awfully romantic.”

Ryan stepped forward, footsteps as loud as he could make them, and rounded the corner to pass the two. They sank gracefully into curtsies, the younger girl blushing, and Ryan bit back a laugh.

Outside, he leaned against the stone wall of the castle and gazed out over the world. Everything was beautiful and warm, the land blossoming in the grip of the season, spring buzzing through the air and across Ryan’s skin. The flowers shifted in the breeze and unfurled their petals to the sun, turning up to the sky, and Ryan felt the same, green and growing taller and into something more brilliant and vivid every day, waiting for the rain, waiting for Brendon.

*

It was a cold night, and they were huddled under the blankets together. “Man,” Ryan said, only half-awake, “I could fucking _kill_ for some good hot chocolate right now.”

“I know this awesome place,” Brendon told him, words blurring together. Some nights he was more tired than others, not having been able to sleep through the day for various reasons. “Right near the City Library, tucked in this little lane behind it. They do the best vegan cheesecake in the world. I’ll take you there when we get back.”

Ryan went very still. “Take me there?” he repeated, carefully.

“Well, yeah.” Brendon offered him a sleepy grin. “It’s kind of sad we haven’t even gone on a real date.”

“We’re,” Ryan said, and swallowed hard. “We’re, uh, dating?”

It was Brendon’s turn to go tense, as he turned slowly onto his side and looked at Ryan a little stonily. “I figured,” he said, maybe a little coldly. “I’m not into the casual fuck kind of thing. But if you’re—”

“No,” Ryan interrupted, a little breathless. He kissed Brendon, hard. “No, I’m – fuck, I thought maybe you—”

“Maybe I _what_?” Brendon asked, looking bewildered, face close to Ryan’s. “Ryan?”

Ryan flushed, and then looked down. He hadn’t said it out loud, and it always brought back that awful, heavy feeling in his stomach and chest. “You said, once,” he mumbled, “That in these worlds you could do stuff that you wouldn’t in the real world. I thought that maybe, like, I was one of those things.”

Brendon looked at him, eyes huge and stricken. “But – _what_?” He pushed Ryan’s hair back from his face and said, in a fast jumble of words, “Ryan, I’ve been following you around like some sort of fucking _puppy_ in every world you pull me into, and half the time you’re like some – some unreadable motherfucking _stone_ and I didn’t know whether I was annoying you or, or _whatever_ , and I’ve come here every night for almost a month and you thought you were some sort of – fucked up vacation indulgence?”

Ryan blinked at him. “You never annoyed me,” he said, only it came out as a whisper.

“Jesus.” Brendon shook his head, looking a little exasperated. Ryan looked down, biting his lip, wondering if it was appropriate to grin dorkily when Brendon looked so mixed up. Brendon’s gaze softened, though, and he appeared suddenly sad, eyes lingering on Ryan’s face like Ryan was all he could ever want, no matter what world, no matter who else. He murmured, “You’ve been really lonely, huh?”

“Um,” Ryan said. He didn’t know how to reply to that, because it had never really occurred to him before. Now, he looked at Brendon’s strangely dear, familiar face, and the curve of his arms and his back and all this skin that Ryan knew so well now, for the first time in what felt like forever, and answered, “Yes.”

Brendon moved in close. He kissed Ryan and said, “No matter what world, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Brendon,” Ryan whispered, and Brendon moved and reached for the oil on the nightstand, slicked up his fingers and took his time, until Ryan was beyond even pleading, lying still and trembling on the bed, breathing in soft, shallow gasps while Brendon murmured about how good he looked, how beautiful he was, how much Brendon wanted him.

When they finally finished, the stars were already fading, morning sweeping in inevitably. Ryan yawned and shifted off Brendon so that he could stand up and get dressed, moving back onto his own side. Brendon made an unhappy noise and drew him close again, nose resting against Ryan’s throat.

“S’almost morning,” Ryan told him, quietly.

“I don’t care,” Brendon said, with enough heat to belie the loose, languid way he was draped himself over Ryan. “I told you. I’m not going anywhere.”

Ryan ducked his head, turning his face into Brendon’s hair. He wondered if Brendon could feel his grin. “We could get kidnapped,” he said evenly.

“I won’t let them.”

“Okay,” Ryan said, “Okay,” and then he curled back around Brendon and lay warm and still and content. After a while Brendon’s breathing evened out and it occurred to Ryan that he had never seen Brendon asleep, not like this, and he moved back enough to watch Brendon’s face (only feeling a _little_ creepy).

Brendon’s face looked oddly foggy, all of a sudden, and Ryan frowned, blinked once, twice, trying to clear the sleep from his eyes. Brendon was fading quickly, though, and Ryan realised what was going on with a horrible certainty, clutching at Brendon’s arm. “No,” he said, “No, I’m happy here, I like it here, please,” but he could feel himself fading away, his hands passing right through Brendon. Brendon opened his eyes and stared, horrified, and Ryan said, “Brendon,” and then he was lying on his empty bed at home, staring at the ceiling. The sheets were cold.

*

He lay in bed for a long time. The radio clock on his bedside table was blinking 10 PM at him, and he wondered again how the time works, how sometimes he arrived back in the moment he left and others not until hours and hours later, or even the next morning. He thought about it now because he didn’t want to think about anything else, about how _close_ he had been to everything being warm and simple.

In the end he was dragged out of bed by his phone ringing. He and Brendon never exchanged numbers, forgot to even think about it (complacent, Ryan thought, you got fucking _complacent_ , you idiot) but now he had a sudden attack of what if. He wasn’t in the book, but he got up as fast as he could and answered.

“Hey,” Spencer said, in return. “I just got back. You okay?”

“How long were you guys there for?” Ryan demanded. “After I had gone, how long—”

“Another three days,” Spencer said. “It was the longest one yet. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Ryan said. Beatrice wound around his legs and he stooped absently to rub his knuckles over her fur, wondering if she was mad now that she was back to sleeping on bits of Ryan’s furniture, rather than in her luxurious bed. “Did Brendon—”

“He stayed a while,” Spencer told him. He sounded tired, and Ryan felt a little guilty. “But he said he really should get back and talk to the – the ninja masters or whatever, now that you weren’t there.” Spencer paused and then added, with surprising heat, “I didn’t like him there.”

“What?” Ryan was too surprised to even be annoyed on Brendon’s behalf. “Why not?”

“He was all – still. And careful. Like – he _moved_ different. It was freaky.”

Ryan bit his lip. He wanted to smile, because he’d liked that, in a way, how focused Brendon had seemed there, all his attention on Ryan, but now the memory kind of made him ache. “I didn’t mind,” he said.

Spencer hesitated and then said for the third time, “Ryan. Are you okay?”

“I’m alright,” Ryan answered. He swallowed hard and thought of Brendon saying _no matter what world, I’m not going anywhere_ and then he said, “Spence, d’you have his number?”

Spencer didn’t say anything for a while, but Ryan could hear his smile. Eventually, Spencer laughed, surprised and delighted, and said with some small wonder in his voice, “Ryan _Ross_. Yes. I do.”

*

Ryan didn’t call him right away. He thought it was sort of late, and Brendon could be tired from the ninja thing in the last world and, anyway, it could wait until tomorrow. Instead he went to bed, and surprised himself by falling asleep almost immediately.

The next morning he felt a little unsure again, fading back inevitably into the person he was here, the real person. It was all very well, Ryan thought, to have A Brendon when you were a princess (though he would never, ever say that out loud) in some mystical castle – now it felt a little presumptuous of him. He remembered how – almost _angry_ Brendon had been when he’d heard Ryan say things like that, though, and he thought _yes, I’ll call, I’ll call_ but he ended up getting dressed and going to work first, instead.

William was practically waiting for him at the door when Ryan got there, of course. He made an elaborate bow and said, “ _Prin_ cess!” and then cracked up laughing. Ryan sat with him for a full hour that morning talking about the world, telling William that no, he was sorry, he didn’t know how to get back to it, yeah, if he did he’d take them, of course.

Eventually William wound down and said, “So, hey, we’ll probably see them all before tonight, but are you coming to watch Tommy’s band anyway?”

“Oh, it’s Tom’s band?” Ryan asked, surprised. William nodded and Ryan said, decisively, “Yes. Yes, I am.”

He finally pulled out his cell on his lunch break, clutching the piece of paper he had scribbled Brendon’s number onto like a lifeline. He felt stupid and teenage and insecure all over again, and a sudden horrible thought struck him: what if Brendon hadn’t been real? Ryan had spoken to William and Spencer outside of the worlds, had it confirmed, but Brendon could just be some weird part of it, or an addled fantasy of Ryan’s subconscious; maybe he had no idea what was going on, who Ryan _was_.

In the end, he dialled the number because otherwise Spencer would kill him. It seemed to ring slower than usual, but Ryan just thought _you’re too fucking paranoid_ ,and waited, hoping Brendon wasn’t in a class or at his part time job or anything.

He wasn’t. “Hello?” Brendon picked up with, and his voice was the same, and Ryan breathed out.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey, it’s me.” He paused and clarified, wincing a little, “Ryan.”

Brendon laughed in a short, delighted burst. “I know who you are,” he replied, and Ryan could almost see his grin, mouth wide and red and beaming. He bit his lip to keep back his own. “You called. Hey.”

“Spencer gave me your number,” Ryan said, a little awkwardly. “I figured—”

“Ryan,” Brendon interrupted. “Ryan, I – I’m really glad, okay, I – hey, are you going to Tom’s band tonight?”

“Yes,” Ryan said. “You too, right?”

“Yeah,” Brendon confirmed. “But look, we should – how long was your lunch break? Are you on that now?”

“I’ve still got nearly an hour left,” Ryan told him, smiling a little crookedly. He hunched in on himself, tucking the phone between his cheek and his shoulder, twisting his hands in his lap. It wasn’t the same as curling up in bed together, but it’d do for now.

“So what if I like, come and – there’s a café near the library, I think? I used to live down that way, we could go for lunch—”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Yeah, that would be good.”

“Great,” Brendon said, “I’ll be there in—” and then Ryan’s world disappeared. It took longer arriving in whatever the new place was this time; Ryan was full of stupid, fierce anger, because it was like this stuff was starting on _purpose_ now, like they keep getting tugged away from each other every time anything _happened_ , but then blackness descended upon him and he was left raging and feeling cheated, and then he didn’t feel anything at all.

*

Ryan sat quietly on the bed with his hands folded in his lap. He was waiting for something, he knew, but he was feeling very patient about it. He would wait for years, if he had to, and if no one ever came, he would not be disappointed. He looked at nothing, because he didn’t really need to be looking at anything, and it appeared to him that much of his life had been spent doing things that were unnecessary, especially considering how often he was alone.

After some hours (Ryan knew how long it has been, exactly, but no one had asked him), the door opened and closed, and Ryan looked up. Brendon stared at him, white-faced, and then he shook his head and said, "No, no, I don't--"

"Oh," Ryan said. Something stirred in him, deep, deep, but mostly he was just vaguely conscious of what a useless phrase 'oh' was. He rose smoothly to his feet. "Hello, Brendon."

"No," Brendon said. "Please, no, this isn’t, please don't be this, Ryan, Ryan."

Ryan smiled at him. Brendon was upset, Ryan knew. That was okay. Ryan was still very patient. Ryan asked Brendon, "What do you want?" He wasn’t curious, but he knew that it would be better once he found out.

"Ryan," Brendon said, helplessly, and then he crossed to the bed and tugged Ryan down next to him, held Ryan's face in his hands and surveyed him intently. "Hey," he said, quietly. "Ryan. What do _you_ want?"

Ryan looked at him a little uncertainly. He felt unprepared for dealing with this eventuality. Something in him twisted, spiraled up, corkscrew panic. He swallowed a gasp, choked on it. "I feel," he said, eventually, "very strange."

"Don't freak out," Brendon told him. Their mouths were very close. Ryan was aware, distantly, that normally he would be _doing_ something at this point; instead there was just that cool layer of patience over everything in him, keeping the panic from bubbling up. "Don't freak out, Ryan, but I think maybe, I think you're not." He swallowed hard, whispered, "Quite... real."

"I don't understand." That weird, rushing panic, pushing at him, too far away. Ryan felt very distant from everything. He didn’t understand; maybe he wasn’t _meant_ to understand.

"I love you," Brendon said, quite suddenly. Ryan thought that that should mean something. He was almost _sure_ that Brendon saying that should mean something. He swallowed. Something was wrong. Then Brendon leaned forward and hugged him close, arms tight around Ryan's neck and shoulders, and he whispered in Ryan's ear, "I think this one is. Robot. I think."

Bright sparks in front of Ryan's eyes for a moment; he touched his wrist, and there was no pulse, only the faint hum of electricity.

*

Ryan counted the seconds in the back of his head and converted them without thought when Brendon asked him to: I’ve been here four hours. Two days. A week. Is there anything you want of me?

Brendon always said no. He stayed with Ryan a lot, though, and Ryan discerned through his posture and his expressions and the almost pleading tone of voice that he wished Ryan to sit with him and listen, so Ryan did that. Ryan was aware that somewhere deep down, buried by the coolness and logic that fill up his mind, his body, machinery turning, he was probably experiencing some distress about his robotic nature, but that felt very far away. It had a bad habit of arising in him now and then, at war with his very _being_ , trying to make him into something that he wasn’t, and all he could do then was sit still and wait for it to pass. Brendon showed some ability at working out when that was going on, because he stopped talking and rolled closer and curled himself around Ryan.

He wasn’t always with Ryan, but that was okay, because mostly the strange – _feelings_ (for lack of a better word) only occurred when Brendon was around. Ryan knew, in the same way that he knew how to count things and that to please Brendon was the best thing to aim for, that in this place, Brendon was an important personage and that Ryan was a gift to him, an offering.

Ryan didn’t think about things very often when Brendon wasn’t there. He didn’t even notice his room, very much, though had Brendon asked it of him, he would have described it perfectly. Things felt white, and clean, and very clear, clearer than they had been in years. Ryan had a feeling he was forfeiting something in order to have things this way, but he didn’t know what it was.

He knew other things, instead, because Brendon talked to him all the time about his discoveries and such. Ryan was aware that perhaps in another place, before this infinite understanding and detachment descended upon him, the things Brendon told him would have been of great importance, something he would have liked to find out. Now he just listened because Brendon wanted him to.

Brendon said, “I don’t know anyone here. I guess it’s because you’re all—” and then he stopped, choking on the words. Ryan waited until Brendon waved his hand and continued, eyes dark and angry. Ryan was sorry that Brendon was unhappy with the situation, but there was only so much he could do to please Brendon; he could not change his form. “Anyway, the people here, they’re real. And I’ve heard them talking about stuff, like, their old religion and mythology and stuff from that and I’ve sort of – you and me, this isn’t the first time it’s happened, I don’t think. And I’m starting to work out like… what’s going on. I have a theory, anyway.

He drew in a deep breath. “It’s because – this is going to sound so stupid. I’m not really into destiny and all of that shit, I promise, I’m just – besides, it’s not like you care right now. So the people here, I don’t know them but they know me, and they said that a while ago, you and me were meant to meet and – it sounds stupid.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid,” Ryan answered, because the look in Brendon’s eyes was frightened and pleading and Ryan knew the correct way to respond. It didn’t work though; Brendon just dropped his head, mouth twisting bitterly.

“Right,” he said. “Shocking that you would say that. Anyway. When – the thing is, you locked yourself up in that house and your job and shit for years and you weren’t ever meant to… like, the almighty universe—” he waggled his fingers, peeking at Ryan from out of the corner of his eye, and Ryan smiled like he was supposed to. “—didn’t predict you… turning into a recluse or, or losing your confidence, or whatever the fuck happened. And so nothing happened, and we didn’t meet, and all this stuff that was supposed to – to fill your life up or something, it just faded away.”

He took a breath, apparently waiting for something, and Ryan nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Thank you, that’s interesting.”

“Shut up,” Brendon said, harshly. “Shut up, that’s not – don’t fucking _lie_. I’m telling you so that whenever you – hopefully whenever we get out of this goddamned fucking place, you’ll remember. So just shut up and listen. Because the problem is, all the worlds that have been happening, that’s been like, heavy overcompensation for whatever you’ve missed, but it’s like – you and me were on the same path, and then you didn’t, didn’t live your life properly or whatever and we were put on different paths, and now – you remember what the unicorn said? The stars are meddling, or whatever. So it’s like they’re trying to shove both paths together, and it doesn’t _work_ that way, which is why every time we ever end up together, any time it looks like we’re going forward in a concrete, sort of, _deliberate_ way, we get pulled away again. Make sense?”

“Yes,” Ryan said. He could tell Brendon that his mind could comprehend all things, now, except perhaps how to be human properly, but Brendon didn’t need, or want, to hear that, so Ryan stayed quiet.

“Well, yeah,” Brendon said. “That’s nearly all of it.” He took a deep breath. “So I have this idea we get. About like – the only chance we get, the only proper chance, I think it’s this Friday. Because that’s how things could have happened, I was going to go and you were maybe going to go before any of this shit happened, and that’s like – a real way that we could have met. And I think that if you – if you get there on Friday, and we can be there and, and meet properly, then – but it’ll be hard, because the worlds are all messed up, and they keep pulling us apart, and then dumping us back in the wrong time – so you just, you’ve gotta get there, Ryan, okay? Are you listening?”

“Yes,” Ryan responded, and he didn’t need to ask to ascertain what Brendon wanted from him now, so he looked straight at Brendon and told him, “I will be there, I promise.”

Brendon made a small noise and looked down at the floor. “You’ve gotta remember this,” he said, voice low and rough. “Whatever happens, you’ve got to remember this. That’s what I want.”

“I will remember,” Ryan promises. Brendon smiled, pleased, and Ryan was glad.

*

Ryan was sitting on the bed when Brendon arrived the next evening. He looked exhausted, dark lines under his eyes, and Ryan realised that at least some of the blame for his sleeplessness could be laid at Ryan’s feet.

“You should sleep,” Ryan told him.

“I don’t want to,” Brendon said, sounding grumpy. He glared at Ryan, which Ryan knew was a logical thing to do, as to Brendon, he was the face of Brendon’s current unhappiness. Brendon said, snidely, “ _You_ go to sleep.”

“I can’t,” Ryan said. “I could pretend though, if you liked.”

Brendon shuddered and looked away, sitting down heavily on the floor. “For fuck’s sake. No, don’t do that. Just – can you just – oh, fuck _off_ , Ryan.”

It was a clear signal to leave, Ryan knew. Often people required some time alone. Ryan knew that the next room was small and dark and Ryan could stand there until Brendon wanted him again.

Instead of leaving, though, he just stood there, arms hanging. Brendon looked up, and sighed. “Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have – it isn’t your fault. Please, though, I just want to – be on my own for a bit.”

“Um,” Ryan said, in a small voice. It was an unnecessary word. He blinked. “Um. I don’t – I don’t want to.”

Brendon rose to his feet in a fluid rush of boy and said, voice low, “What _do_ you want, Ryan?”

“I want,” Ryan said, and disappeared.

It was the worst yet; Ryan breathed in as the air of that world faded and changed and everything fell back into place, his heart pounding, his breathing ragged, and Ryan thought how absurd this whole thing was, felt frightened, stupid, desperate, thought about Brendon saying _you and me were meant to meet_ and _the only chance we get_ and _I love you_. He opened his eyes and the world was still spinning, things shaking out of control, and he reached out helplessly and thought _please, oh, please_ , just as his feet slammed down hard on the floor and he opened his eyes to a shifting, dancing crowd and lights flickering across the stage. He looked towards it and recognised Tom, bent over his guitar, and he thought _fuck, it was Friday night_.

Then someone slammed into him, shoving him hard against a wall, knocking all the breath out of him, and Ryan looked up just in time to meet Brendon’s eyes and then be kissed, hard and rough, mouths knocking wet and off-balance against each other. Brendon caged Ryan’s face in his hands, tangling his fingers in Ryan’s hair and said, “Oh, thank God, thank fuck, I—”

“What’s going on?” Ryan asked, in a small voice. “Brendon?”

“I thought you weren’t going to show up,” Brendon told him, fast and frantic. “I thought – but you came—”

“No, listen to me, I just appeared,” Ryan told him, trying to be coherent, voice stumbling. “I just got back from—”

“Oh, shit,” Brendon said, eyes huge and dark. “The robot thing—”

“ _Yes_ ,” Ryan said, and it came out a little like a sob. “Yes, Brendon, I’m sorry, I couldn’t, I couldn’t _feel_ anything, and I,” and then they were kissing again, desperate, Brendon biting at his mouth, the wall hard against Ryan’s back and Brendon pressed up all along his front. When they broke away again, Brendon didn’t take his hands away from Ryan’s face, pressed their foreheads together. Ryan asked, dizzily, “I’m not here? I mean, I haven’t showed up, I didn’t come on time—”

“No,” Brendon said, closing his eyes. “But you’re here now.”

“I don’t think this is how it’s meant to go,” Ryan whispered. “I’m in the wrong time,” and Brendon shook his head a little wildly, pressed close, but Ryan could feel him already fading away.

When Ryan looked up again, he was standing inside the library. William looked back at him impatiently, said, “Come on, Ross, I’ve got to close up.”

“What time is it?” Ryan asked. Please, he thought, I don’t want to miss it, I can’t miss it—

“Five,” William answered, rolling his eyes. “Come on. You coming for the openers tonight?”

“I’ll try,” Ryan said.

“Awesome, they’re friends of mine.” William grinned and ushered him out, locking the door behind them. “I guess I’ll see you at eight, then.”

“Yes,” Ryan agreed. Yes.

*

He ended up being ready to walk out the door by seven o’clock, knowing he was too early (the club was barely a twenty minute train ride from him), unable to help it, restless and shaking and thinking of Brendon saying _no, you’re not here_. He would be, he’d change it, he’d go and wait for Brendon out on the pavement if he had to. Ryan was sick of wanting, of worlds colliding and storybook, fantastical things happening. He was done with it.

He sat on the train, and the woman opposite him smiled in a friendly sort of way. She looked motherly, around forty with laugh lines around her eyes and Ryan breathed out and smiled back, looking down at his lap.

The train stopped moving. When he looked up, surprised, he realised he was sitting on the green grass of the world of the unicorns, and Brendon was lying on his back, eyes closed against the sun.

“What?” he said, aloud, hands shaking, and Brendon smiled but didn’t open his eyes. “Are we back?”

“I think,” Brendon said musingly, “that I’ve worked some more stuff out. You’re not even in the real world properly, Ryan. That’s why all this stuff centres around you. And that’s why when we go back, you’re the one who gets chucked haphazardly back into the day at the wrong time.”

Ryan swallowed. “What does that mean?”

Brendon opened his eyes and smiled gently at him. “It means when we go back, I’ll end up in the same minute I left. And I don’t know where you’ll be.”

“I want to,” Ryan began, and realised to his horror that his voice was choked up. He gave up and lay down, curling in next to Brendon’s side. The sun was warm on his shirt and Ryan closed his eyes and breathed Brendon in.

Brendon responded nearly half an hour later, voice quiet and sad. “I know,” he said. “I know you want.”

Ryan breathed out, a huge shuddering sigh, and Brendon shifted above him. For a second, light as Brendon’s slight breath on Ryan’s face, he felt Brendon’s eyelashes fluttering against his cheek, and then he reached out and found his hands clenching on empty air.

He opened his eyes. He was sitting in the white room of the robot, and Brendon wasn’t there this time. He stood up and, moving slowly and methodically, crossed to where a vase on a pillar was displayed. He hadn’t noticed it when he was here before; hadn’t been meant to notice anything unless Brendon wanted it of him. Now, he picked it up and smashed it on the floor. He pulled the mirror off the wall and jumped on it. He considers putting his hand through a window but decided against it, instead putting all his weight behind the (mostly empty) wardrobe and shoving until it fell over.

HOW IS THAT, the unicorn asked, GOING TO SOLVE ANYTHING, but when Ryan turned around no one was there.

“Fucking come out and _face_ me!” he yelled, voice cracking, and he whirled around again, and he was standing by the lake outside the castle. He shouted and demanded answers to the air for what felt like forever, but no one responded, and eventually he flopped down on the grass and tasted bitterness in the back of his throat.

TIME IS PASSING, the unicorn told him, AND YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE UNTIL YOU CALM DOWN, STUPID BOY, and Ryan took in a shuddering breath. He didn’t yell this time when he looked around and still couldn’t see any sign of the unicorn; instead he pushed his hands through his hair and finally pulled off his jacket and kicked off his shoes with a curse, and dived straight into the lake, slicing cleanly through the water.

He swam all the way down to the bottom and dug his fingers through the soft mud, the weeds. When his lungs were aching he kicked back up to the surface and gasped, out of breath. On the shore, Beatrice was watching him with a mildly disgusted expression, and Ryan laughed helplessly, then lay on his back, bobbed up and down and felt the water holding him up, cool and buoyant. He looked at Beatrice and said, “You never got a choice either, huh,” and “I’m sorry, I know cats like being somewhere familiar.” If he was on the shore, he thought, he would stroke his hand through her fur, but he wasn’t, so he just looked at her and admitted quietly, “I would be kind of sad if you ran away.”

The bottom of the lake rushed up to meet his feet and it felt like the wooden planks of the jetty on the far edge, but it wasn’t. Ryan looked around the empty pirate ship, sails flapping in the small wind, the lanterns lit against the dark knight. The moon was out, full and bright, and Ryan crosses to the edge of the deck to lean out over the railings.

Silvery bodies broke the surface, leaping up into the glow of moonlight that stripped across the water, and Ryan’s breath caught despite himself, smiling as the school of dolphins leapt and squeaked cheerfully at each other. He leaned as far over the side as he could, despite the fact that he’d never be able to reach the water, not on this huge ship, and he imagined that they had turned their faces to him. They were smooth and beautiful and for a moment Ryan was glad again for this strange, wonderful week; for the chances it had given; for being a princess and nights lit by fire and a unicorn to guide them; for Spencer and Beatrice following him faithfully wherever they could; for colliding with Brendon again and again, if only for a little while.

BETTER, the unicorn said approvingly, BUT I CANNOT WALK WITH YOU ON A BOAT, NO MATTER HOW LARGE, AND YOU STILL NEED TO SEE, and then Ryan turned his face away from the dolphins and up to the night sky, and held it there, so that he didn’t get dizzy when the ship changed to hard, metallic surfaces beneath him, and the hum of the spaceship’s engine replaced the waves.

“Yes,” he said, quietly, looking around him. The screen he had spoken to Brendon on was black, turned off, but Beatrice was stretching her back, a streak of arched movement, on the floor, and when he sat down she stepped gingerly onto his lap, fixing her claws into the cloth of his pants and settling herself, whiskers brushing against Ryan’s arm. “This place isn’t so lonely, after all,” he told her. “Not after the robot thing.” Beatrice purred.

He looked out the window at the stars. They still seemed very far away, and Ryan felt small and confused and a little guilty, even, for having attracted their attention, having forced their interest to him just because he was lazy and quiet and not brave enough to go out and live in the way he always said he was going to. He pressed his face into Beatrice’s fur, even though she hated it and it always grossed Spencer out when Ryan did it in front of him, and said, “I kind of fucked up, huh?” Beatrice didn’t respond.

The stars were very bright against the dark sky. Ryan smiled crookedly and imagined Tom’s band launching into their set, imagined himself staggering out from nowhere for Brendon to launch himself at, imagined himself disappearing again, and said, “Sorry for wasting your time, guys.” The stars, like Beatrice, remained silent, but someone laughed all the same, and Ryan found himself sitting on the edge of a stage, legs dangling off the side. It was clear that a festival had been here recently; the band’s equipment all packed up and the grounds empty, but posters still everywhere and lights up and litter all over the grass.

Ryan jumped off the stage and said, looking around for Beatrice, “I half thought I’d imagined that one.”

WELL, the unicorn said, NOW YOU KNOW DIFFERENT.

“Yeah,” Ryan said. The unicorn was as beautiful and terrifying as he remembered, picking its way towards him across the littered ground. Ryan leaned back against the stage and asked, “Hey, did you and your people turn out okay, without us?”

YES. The unicorn sounded amused. SOMETIMES EVEN WE MISINTERPRET PROPHECIES. THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONCERN.

Ryan smiled crookedly and then let it fade, taking a deep breath. “Am I going to get back in time?”

MAYBE, the unicorn told him. Ryan looked down.

“I don’t think so,” he murmured. “I don’t think. I think there’s something wrong.”

IF ANYTHING IS WRONG, the unicorn said, and it sounded almost gentle, THAT HAPPENED A LONG TIME AGO.

Ryan tilted his head to the side and raises an eyebrow, said, “You know, all that stuff about destiny and paths crossing and being meant to meet sounded pretty ridiculous.”

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE, the unicorn told him, sounding weary, TO EXPLAIN PROPERLY TO YOU, IN TERMS THAT YOU WILL UNDERSTAND, EVERYTHING THAT IS GOING ON. IT IS BEYOND EVEN MY COMPREHENSION. SOMETIMES THINGS GET MISALIGNED, AND CERTAIN MEASURES MUST BE TAKEN TO FIX THEM. THAT IS AS SIMPLY AS I CAN PUT IT.

“Sure,” Ryan said. “But, I mean… given that, even, I still don’t get – it feels really arrogant to think that just because I wasn’t… living my life, or whatever, things this crazy could happen, and I could drag this many people in with me. Or even.” He stopped, drew in a breath, because he didn’t really want to say things like this, not when he was so far away, not now that he was fairly sure he would never be close enough. “Me and Brendon aren’t that special. Not really. Not to other people. And unless we go on to save the world or something, I just don’t see what… all the fuss is going on about.”

The unicorn cocked its head to the side and regarded Ryan steadily. It looked suddenly gentle, though Ryan couldn’t say how he knew that.

THE STARS, it said, HAVE THEIR OWN IDEAS ABOUT WHAT MAKES A PERSON IMPORTANT. OR A LOVE STORY SIGNIFICANT.

Ryan looked down, and oh, his chest _ached_.“Okay.”

NO FURTHER ARGUMENTS?

“I’m done.” Ryan looked at his hands. He said, “I’m like – there’s nothing I can do now. I screwed up years ago. All I – all I ever do was want things, and I, I just. Don’t know how to go about getting them.” He swallowed hard and added, so soft he could barely hear himself, “I guess I’m pretty screwed up.”

The unicorn walked forward deliberately and lowered its head to bump it carefully against Ryan’s side, keeping the horn away. Ryan went still and then managed a small smile, lifted his hand carefully to smooth it along the unicorn’s warm, soft neck.

YOU ARE GETTING BETTER, the unicorn told him, and then the ground under Ryan started to shake, and he was sitting on the train again. They came out of the tunnel and it was still dark; Ryan switched his cell on with shaking hands and read the time – 3:37 AM – before it turned itself off again, out of battery. Ryan lowered his head and stared at his hands and swallowed around the tightness in his throat, bit his lip. He thought, _sorry, fuck, I’m sorry, Brendon_ and got off at his station automatically, heading towards the venue because there wasn’t anything else he could do.

He moved slowly. He didn’t really have a concrete plan of what to do; this area of town was generally pretty good at night, but he still didn’t think walking around so early in the morning was a particularly brilliant idea. He kept his hands in his pockets, his gaze on the ground; he hoped Beatrice was okay.

When he looked up, he had turned around the corner onto the street of the venue. It was a semi-main street, and the occasional car still passed, headlights slicing through the glow of the streetlamps. Ryan closed his eyes briefly at the deserted appearance of the place, touching his throat almost absently, and kept walking.

It took him a moment longer to notice it; a small, dark shadow under the streetlamp outside the venue. Ryan stopped, and the person unfolded themselves from where they were sitting cross-legged beneath the lights. _Oh,_ Ryan thought, _oh, I am so in love with you_.

 __Brendon leaned back against the pole and took his hand out of his pocket, gave him a small wave, and Ryan started walking again, steps speeding up, crossing the distance between them, stepping in and out of the lights above him. Brendon looked exhausted, swaying slightly on his feet and then leaning heavily back against the streetlamp, but his face was lit with a soft, golden glow, and Ryan didn’t mind if Brendon slept, they could sleep together, and when Ryan woke up in the morning he knew instinctively, with a clear, sure certainty that he would still be in this world, and so would Brendon and it would be good.

“Hi,” Brendon said, when Ryan got close enough, and his voice was rusty and worn and Ryan could hear the happiness spilling up out of it, the bareboned, exhausted relief. Brendon reached out and Ryan stepped into his space, folding close, brushing his lips over Brendon’s cheek, his closed eyes. Brendon smiled and repeated, soft and almost awed, “Hi.”

“Oh,” Ryan said, caught off-guard, and Brendon was smaller than Ryan remembered, curled quiet into him, “Hello.”


End file.
